Singer Julian Casablancas, performing in August 2004, on Randalls Island.   (Photo: Kristin Callahan/LFI)

First Impressions of Earth is an altogether more ambitious and impressive album. It’s still 3 a.m. in Casablancas’s voice, but it no longer sounds as if he’s drunk and shouting at you from the sidewalk through a tenement intercom. The production is cleaner, less garagey. The songs don’t sound quite as interchangeable— I still have trouble telling many of the songs on Room on Fire apart—and the band, especially Valensi, reveal previously unsuspected flashes of virtuosity. By almost any measure, it’s their best album. The propulsive rhythmic energy and the instant melodic appeal of the best songs provide a taut counterpoint to the wounded sneer of Casablancas’s lyrics, which are as disillusioned, doomy, and sarcastic as ever. Five years after their arrival seemed to presage a New York rock-and-roll renaissance, First Impressions of Earth confirms the fact that the Strokes are still the only local band capable of conquering the world.

Early buzz is strong. Jon Pareles gave it high marks in the Times last week. “Juicebox” became the band’s first Billboard No. 1 single, shortly after its release in December. And the authority I trust the most, my 11-year-old son, summed it up this way: “Definitely better than Room on Fire, at least as good as Is This It—maybe even better.”

Talking about the album, the Strokes themselves sound cautious and self-critical. Even as the crowd in London went nuts over their performance, they stood backstage enveloped in an evil mood. “That was awful,” said Hammond, crouching with the others in a stairwell between the stage and the downstairs dressing room immediately after finishing the set.

“Get me to Heathrow immediately,” said Casablancas.

“Are they even applauding?” asked Moretti. “I don’t hear anything.”

While the audience stomped and screamed for more, the guys were convinced they’d bombed. Throughout the few days I was with them in London, their angst was almost unbearable. Before the show, in the dressing room, I thought I was going to have a contact anxiety attack or possibly puke from the collective tension. Now, after the show, nobody was any more relaxed. I thought this was supposed to be the fun part.

“Fuck it, I’m going out,” Hammond said, grimly determined to plow through the encore.

They may look jaded in their photos, but they take their jobs very seriously, and at that moment, they seemed convinced that no one was going to like their new album.

“The best artists,” Casablancas says, “are the ones that work the hardest, and if you work hard enough, you’ll eventually experience the happy accidents that are art. I learned that from my stepfather.” We are sitting in a ramen shop in the East Village, Julian’s neighborhood, a few days after Thanksgiving. He’s wearing a T-shirt that says JUST ONE MORE AND THEN I GOTTA GO under a tan Levi’s cord jacket. Bob Marley’s “Exodus” is playing on the speakers. In an hour, he will head off for rehearsal. Casablancas doesn’t look like a type A personality; in fact, he always looks, and sounds, as if he’s just woken up from a nap or he’s about to pass out. A work ethic is not something one associates with rock and roll, let alone a band this languidly stylish, but by many accounts, Julian is a grind.

In the early days, the Strokes worked the scene, hitting the bars and clubs of the Lower East Side after eight hours of rehearsal to hand out flyers and schmooze the scenesters. “They have an almost military sense of discipline,” says manager Ryan Gentles, who was a booker at the Mercury Lounge when he came across the Strokes and decided to sign on (he’s often referred to as “the sixth Stroke”). While the band spread the word and established themselves on the club circuit, Julian spent hours writing songs—words and music, guitar solos and bridges, everything meticulously worked out—and still does.

“People in our camp are making me feel bad,” says Julian, “about doing it the way I want to do it.”

“Julian eats, breathes, sleeps, and shits music,” Valensi says. “We’ll show up at the studio at noon, and he’ll be there in the studio till four in the morning. He doesn’t stop. Long after everyone else has gone home, he’s still like remixing stuff, trying out different things. He’s like an android. I get to the point where I can’t listen to music anymore and I have to stop, but Julian doesn’t. His ear is so sharp. He’s the one with the ear for detail in this band. Creatively, he is a force to be reckoned with. He’s difficult to work with, and a lot of times he has difficulty communicating, but he’s so creative.”

Certainly Casablancas has some kind of hellhound on his trail. He didn’t have much use for his teachers at the Dwight School, where he landed after leaving the Lycée, or for anything they tried to teach him. He credits his stepfather, Ghanaian-born artist Sam Adoquei, for giving form and shape to his angsty teenage dreams. Although he carries around a name made semi-famous by his father—with whom he says relations have warmed, after years of friction—it is Adoquei whom he can’t stop talking about. “He’s an amazing guy. He taught me everything about art and philosophy. He taught me that the best artists were the ones that worked the hardest.” Adoquei also gave him a copy of the Best of the Doors, yet another touchstone for the Strokes.