Reluctant rock redeemers

JULIAN CASABLANCAS is getting tired of people asking him where he’s going.

And he doesn’t mean Madrid, his destination this day as he navigates the Milan airport, in the middle of a hectic European jaunt of press sessions and club shows to advance Tuesday’s release of the Strokes’ third album, “First Impressions of Earth.”

Rather, the singer-songwriter is frustrated with questions about his band’s larger direction, its ambition and goals. Its mission.

Well, that’s what you get when just a few years ago you were widely hailed as a savior of rock ‘n’ roll. At least, that’s the way some positioned it when the Strokes arrived, with their mix of music (drawing on ‘60s-cool avatars the Velvet Underground and ‘70s and ‘80s heroes ranging from Tom Petty to Morrissey) and swagger (pure Manhattan party boys). It was a time ruled by rap-metal, and to many the Strokes, along with the White Stripes, heralded a new age of “purer” rock values.

All went according to plan with a debut album, 2001’s “Is This It,” selling a solid million in the U.S. and collecting international accolades. But a second album, 2003’s “Room on Fire,” stalled at half the sales, and even supporters started to question the band’s will to lead while watching Coldplay do the hard work to achieve the status some wanted for the Strokes. To make matters worse, such other upstarts as Franz Ferdinand and the Killers walked through the commercial door the Strokes opened.

So now with the third album -- historically a make-or-break career mark -- it’s hard not to ask: Are the Strokes going to step up and be a world-class band or not?

“I don’t know,” Casablancas, 27, says by cellphone. “I don’t really think about it. In our minds, we feel like the record is good and we can sustain a career.”

But that answer, he knows, isn’t good enough for many he encounters, particularly in the press and the music business, which seem to hunger for a catchy (and perhaps simplistic) narrative with which to package the band.

“They want you to think about it -- ‘Are you saving rock ‘n’ roll?’ ” he says. “Leave me alone. We’re making music.”

Charles Aaron, music editor of Spin magazine, sympathizes with Casablancas. After all, didn’t the band do enough in the first place?

“You can only save rock one time,” Aaron says. “They did their thing already, paved the way. Things like the Killers wouldn’t be there if not for the Strokes. You can’t really reclaim the moment where everything seems so fun and brilliantly tossed off.”

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A big step, but which direction?

TO be fair, the Strokes didn’t try to reclaim that moment. The second album more or less followed the same pattern of the first in a somewhat thin sound and casual approach, with a return to original producer Gordon Raphael after aborted sessions with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich. The new one, though, was crafted with more care under the detail-oriented watch of veteran producer David Kahne, whose long resume includes the Bangles, Sugar Ray and Paul McCartney.

“People’s perception is it seems like a pretty big step, whether forward or backward,” suggests Casablancas. “There’s some kind of distance from the past records. We don’t want to do the same thing. The second record musically was different, but the production was the same and people swept the music under the rug. Don’t want to hear that again.”

The evidence is clear from the first single, “Juicebox,” which takes a surf-rooted riff through a decidedly harder approach almost recalling Nirvana or Velvet Revolver. Overall, the album moves between that edge and the more familiar Strokes shuffles, marked by choppy rhythms and Casablancas’ muted vocals -- the latter this time thankfully free of the intentionally tinny effect that marked his singing on the first two.

This all comes at a time when the band has moved at least a little away from its wild youth, part of the group mystique since it formed in 1998 out of the boarding school friendships of Casablancas (whose father founded the Elite Model Management firm; the other members all came from upper-class backgrounds), guitarists Albert Hammond Jr. and Nick Valensi, bassist Nikolai Fraiture and drummer Fabrizio Moretti.

The singer quit drinking in 2003 and in February married the Strokes’ assistant manager. Around the same time, Fraiture became a father. There’s even a Hollywood romance in the back story: Moretti has long been dating actress Drew Barrymore. And furthering an environment of businesslike domesticity, the band built its own New York studio and focused seriously with Kahne.

But the question remains: Do these guys want to be huge -- and if so, are they willing to do the work to get there?

“Even if huge success was their deepest wish, I don’t think they’d let us know,” KROQ music director Lisa Worden says. “The Strokes have played it a little safe. They do everything on their terms, the way that they’re comfortable. That’s fine. I respect the hell out of them for that. I want them to be bigger. But it will be on their terms. The world is there if they want to do the things to get there.”

Steve Ralbovsky, the RCA Records senior vice president of A&R; who signed the Strokes six years ago and still works with them, believes the group simply does not want to conform to perceptions that have been imposed on it.

“My quick and sometimes sarcastic timeline is that the first record was a phenomenon that they didn’t ask for or expect in terms of the accolades or place they were suddenly launched to,” he comments. “The upside was the inspiration it provided for a whole generation of fans. The downside was they carried a mantle they didn’t ask for.... They became an easy target.”

The spotlight and the subsequent backlash put the musicians on their heels a bit, he says. Now there’s a more secure feeling, and both band and record label are charting a course that will serve business and art needs equally.

Says Ralbovsky, “I hope the story goes phenomenon-backlash-comeback and that they’re a world-class band that writes world-class songs and plays world-class shows, cares about their fans and will not do every single little swap meet to sell 12 more records.”

But the band is hardly eschewing promotional activities. The current four-week Europe jaunt is just a start. This week will see an announcement of five or six club shows in U.S. cities, sponsored by local radio stations with tickets going exclusively to listeners (a KROQ-related L.A. show is a good bet).

After that will come a full tour of the United Kingdom -- where the band received a lot of early support, but which it largely bypassed last time around. And an extensive U.S. tour will likely begin in late February, with plans for the Strokes to be on the road throughout most of the year.

“They don’t like to play the game, which is a hackneyed expression, but there are certain things they set themselves on course not to do -- the traditional soul-crushing, causing-bands-to-break-up way,” Ralbovsky notes. “But along the way, they’ve learned there are ways to do some of those things, be friendly toward your necessary media partners, but in a way that you can feel comfortable with and feel is credible.”

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The burden of leadership

CASABLANCAS doesn’t sound entirely comfortable at the moment.

“If we just play shows and talk to cool people, that I could do forever all day,” he says. “But I don’t know. Trying to figure out how to make sense -- there’s this whole machine aspect about it that’s just not for us. We’re figuring our way around it and I think doing a pretty good job. Then again, I guess I never feel prepared. I don’t know why.”

He is proud of the band’s being seen as a trendsetter. “Yeah, maybe,” he says. “I guess we influenced record labels as to other bands they signed.”

But he hardly believes their efforts created any kind of revolution.

“I heard the [new English group] Arctic Monkeys, saw them and thought they were great,” he says. “I feel it’s bubbling beneath the surface. I don’t really want to turn on the radio. It’s like a nightmare to me. But I have a sense that maybe the good stuff will take over at some point.”

But the notion of trying to be a leader seems a can’t-win prospect to him.

“Other people know more about that than I do,” he says. “I keep it simple in my mind. We worked on songs and now we’re going to play them for people. The purest way to enjoy music is live, and we’re going to go around and share what we did with people.

“At the same time, the people who pay for us to do that are trying to keep their fingers crossed that we’ll have a hit or whatever. We want success and appreciate the success we’ve had. But now we just want to keep something that we think is special and keep it going.”

Through it all, he is happy, he insists.

“Uh, yes,” he says. “Doesn’t sound very convincing! I think it’s sort of the constant effort involved. Sometimes when you make your hardest push you expect a second to breathe. But the harder you push, the harder you have to push afterward.”

The Strokes’ legacy, he believes, will be what it will be.

“If we’re lucky, then maybe we started something, put some wheels in motion maybe that will affect something more substantially down the line. Right now I can’t perceive it. I’m thinking of new songs and messing with ideas, lyrics, trying to move on and let it speak for itself. But no, we have to talk about it in terms of what other people think about it.”

If he can’t quite say where he’s going, he knows where he doesn’t want to go, noting a fear “that I’m going to start writing things like ‘On a steel horse I ride’ -- Bon Jovi on-the-road songs,” he says, quoting the song “Dead or Alive” with a laugh. “The low point a couple of years ago was on a plane, listening to that Bon Jovi song, and relating to the lyrics.”