10 2000s Albums That Are A Lot Better Than You Remember

Sometimes when a band is starting out, you end up leading with your best foot forward a little too well. No matter how much you may try to innovate past your debut, there will always be people willing to describe your newer stuff as "not nearly as good as the old days, man." Though The Strokes managed to really stink up the place with First Impressions of Earth, there's still some quality stuff on here that you wouldn't notice on first glance.

Compared to the slapdash delivery of albums like Room on Fire and Is This It, this is one of the more extravagant turns for these New York misfits, as they take on some more complex musical moves on stuff like Vision of Division. Though stuff like Juicebox is still a decent enough song to soothe over your average Strokes fan, where else are you going to find a song like Ask Me Anything, with a backing track dominated by just Julian Casablancas' voice and a MIDI string section?

Granted, not all of the songs on here stick the landing, and the record does feel a bit lethargic at almost an hour in runtime. Still, no rock band got anywhere interesting by resting on their laurels, so we probably wouldn't have something like the New Abnormal if not for the experiments (and mistakes) made on this record.