Last Nite

Is This It arrived in July 2001 and immediately felt like an event — a New York rock album simultaneously retro and current, indebted to Television and the Velvet Underground while sounding like nothing that had come before. Julian Casablancas's vocal performance, run through a lo-fi filter, was the sound of affected cool achieved.

Last Nite is the album's most immediate track: a guitar figure borrowed from Tom Petty's "American Girl" (Petty was gracious about it), Casablancas's voice at its most plaintive, a melody that lodged immediately and permanently.

The Strokes' debut was a critical and cultural phenomenon; their subsequent records have been more uneven. Is This It remains a genuinely extraordinary document of a very specific New York moment.