When Is This It was released in 2001 I was eleven years old. I remember it for two reasons: 1) My brother owned a copy, and 2) The cover was of a naked woman (at least as naked as I’d ever seen at eleven years old).

As I grew older and each of The Strokes subsequent albums came out, I noticed that each release was surrounded by a sense of hype I’d not seen with other bands. From what I gathered, back in 2001 Is This It changed rock and roll. It had, apparently, saved it.

A glance at the top selling albums of 2001 certainly seems to support this claim; Creed and Staind were two of the other big rock bands that year and without some thorough research I honestly couldn’t tell you what either band are doing now. The Strokes, on the other hand, never seemed to go away – many albums, including their own, have since been compared to Is This It ensuring they’re never far from memory.

But how incredible and mind blowing was the The Strokes’ debut album really? It never made it to number one, it instead peaked at number two and within two weeks of that it wasn’t even in the top ten. In fact, at this point in time Changing Faces – The Best Of Louise was out-selling The Strokes. Yes, Louise Redknapp, who now makes a living advertising Nintendo products alongside her husband and father in law.

Is This It was a very good album but the fact that the band’s most recent offering, Angles, is being compared to it through rose-tinted glasses takes away from the fact that it too is a good album. It may not be as good as Is This It but is it really only worth the two or three stars it’s receiving?

Opening track ‘Machu Picchu’ is a great song that doesn’t sound too dissimilar to that other New York band inspired by The Strokes, Vampire Weekend. Lead single ‘Under Cover Of Darkness’ features the kind of guitar interplay the band are known for while ‘You’re So Right’ harks back to their 2005 single ‘Juicebox’.

Angles isn’t the most original album in the world, but I can certainly think of worse things for The Strokes to be doing than sounding like The Strokes.