10 Best Rock Albums Of The 2000s

As the decade began, everyone was looking for the new rock sound without really knowing anything about what it was supposed to sound like. After just a few months though, a rough-and-tumble group out of New York figured out the best way to excite an audience was to cull from the past.

Is This It is the Strokes at their rawest, as they rip through 70's style rock tunes with smooth finesse. The harsh buzz of the guitars combined with the slightly seductive vocals of Julian Casablancas give each of these songs a strange familiarity before you've even heard them.

Rather than pulling from garage acts like The Sonics or the Stooges, The Strokes's sound seemed to have more in common with the off-kilter weirdness of a band like the Velvet Underground, only fed through the lens of the millennial mentality. The lyrics detail the life of a street rat as he moves from one place to another, unsure of what life has in store.

In calling back to past sounds, the Strokes's debut record was both a wave of nostalgia while also being an incredibly forward-looking artistic venture. Once the band made it big on the scene, the grimy darkness of New York City seemed all the more intriguing yet again.