The Strokes

Posters on the Web music-biz bulletin board the Velvet Rope have been drooling like a Newfoundland forced to endure a long road trip in the back of the family station wagon over this New York quintet, which is supposed to be the second coming of the Stooges but sounds more like if Cake tried to remake Talking Heads: 77 without Vince di Fiore’s trumpet. It’s catchy stuff, a crummy recording of a band that’s getting all the right breaks—lead singer Julian Casablancas’ daddy owns a modeling agency; guitarist Albert Hammond’s daddy had a massive hit in the ’70s with “It Never Rains in Southern California.” But at the end of the day you’ve either got it or you don’t, and these lads have enough sugarpop hootchie-koo to expand their fan base beyond bored supermodels and the perverts who scheme to shag them. Hey, if I were a bored supermodel, I’d be shaking off my ennui to shake my tail feather, too!