10 Perfect Rock Debut Albums Of The 2000s

In every music scene, you can always have too much of a good thing, and rock certainly had its fill with pop punk and nu metal. No matter what style of rock you thought you liked, you were either going to be rooting for a band like Green Day or someone like Deftones with little to no overlap at the time. As the millennium started out though, there are always a few bands that we can all mutually agree kicked ass.

Then again, it's strange even calling the Strokes a '00s band at all, since their sound seems like it's been ripped directly out of the '70s rock playbook. From the title track onward, this entire album sounds like it's being played out of a grimy club in the middle of Manhattan, where there's glitter everywhere and the booze are flowing like crazy.

This isn't just some album of excess or anything either, with Julian Casablancas taking us on a journey through NYC and showing just how much trouble a kid can get into when he's got a couple bucks and nothing better to do. After years of making music that sounded like it should be the soundtrack to a pool party, this is the moment where rock actually started to sound fresh and dangerous again. This version of New York may have been a bit more gritty than you remembered, but it's one that Lou Reed would have recognized in an instant.