Rock and Roll debauchery has always held its appeal to me, when the cool band of the moment does something outrageous. Noel Gallagher once said, “Until you’ve actually thrown a television set out of a window, you don’t even know the sense of joy it brings.” The Strokes, led by stylish frontman Julian Casablancas were that cool, on edge band for me in the early 2000s. I have no accounting for hotel structural damage that they caused back then, but I always thought they might unleash that destruction at any moment.

The debut album Is This It was already on the hype train when it came out in 2001 on the heels of the success of their EP The Modern Age, which was released in the United Kingdom the same year. The first single from the album was, “Hard to Explain” rose to number 1 on the UK indie charts. This was our first introduction to the guitar heavy sound of The Strokes with the reverse reverb on Casablancas’ vocals, a defining sound of the early oughts.

In the vein of rock and roll mythology, good artists copy, great artists steal. With that in mind there was a definite and later blessed theft involved with the making of the single, “Last Nite.” The rhythm guitar intro is almost a direct lift from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’,“American Girl” something the band would later admit to in an interview that Petty himself referenced. Like a true crusader for the love of rock and roll, Petty never sued or was in any way negative about them lifting the intro, he laughed it off like the legend he is.

The easiest listening song on the album is probably the third single, “Someday” with its jangling guitars and somewhat hopeful lyrics, “You say you want to stay by my side, darling your head’s not right, ah, see, alone we stand, together we fall apart, yeah, I think I’ll be alright.” The music video was fun, featuring the band in a bar telling stories, sharing cigarettes and drinks, it would be rock and roll caricature if it didn’t look so natural and cool.

The Strokes were going to be the band that saved rock and roll in 2001, and their debut album Is This It? was going to be the blueprint. That kind of hype was something no band could ever live up to, but at least we got this masterpiece. If nothing else it shows the enduring power of rock and roll to have a record like this come out decades after the prime era of the genre. The energy of the record is also undeniable, and it clocks in at around 37 minutes, just enough time to make a memory tonight that will be hard to explain.