The Strokes

First Impressions of Earth (RCA)

Someone get Julian Casablancas ulcer medication. It's easy to imagine him seated at a massive window in a spiffy New York apartment watching the rain come down and trying to put chords together on a guitar as the pressure to finally evolve his band's sound twists knots in his gut. Since Casablancas's second stroke, Room on Fire, proved to be pretty similar to his first (though almost as good), the poor boy has had quite a burden on his brain: Are he and his prep-school buddies great rock 'n' rollers or just good ones? Will the Strokes take a masterful step this time around or simply turn out Is This It III?

Cleverly, the question fuels the band's latest album, First Impressions of Earth, on which Casablancas often seems to be wondering aloud whether his privileged moping will be good enough for the history books. He solemnly repeats that he's "got nothing to say" on the think piece "Ask Me Anything" until he seems to resign himself to vacancy, growing cheerful as he realizes he's just used it to write a chorus. In the fiery "15 Minutes," Casablancas screams tellingly: "Everybody at the party shouldn't worry if I'm there / Everybody at the party shouldn't worry what they wear / 'Cause today they'll talk about us, and tomorrow they won't care."

Largely because their vocalist has been cured of his once-omnipresent mumble and can now belt out natural ache along with poetic neurosis, the Strokes have managed to prove themselves with Impressions. Their sound hasn't been transformed – again, the corners are chiseled, the changes refined, and the textures upgraded by pop all-star David Kahne and same-old Strokes man Gordon Raphael. The duo inspire a team effort to instrumentally back up Casablancas's unidirectional intensity: Guitarist Albert Hammond goes shredder, bassist Nick Valensi goes goth (making "Juicebox" gloomily clumsy), and drummer Fab Moretti tosses his once-mechanical heart to match the confusion and change in the lyrics. So Casablancas, forget about reputation and distrust all notions of greatness: Obsessing – rather than revolutionizing – is what the Strokes do best. (Ian S. Port)

Chad VanGaalen

Infiniheart (Sub Pop)

Just as Jessica Rabbit can't help that she was drawn like a vixen, Chad VanGaalen can't help that he sounds like Neil Young. I'm sure he's tried to sound like Joe Cocker, Ray Charles, or Clay Aiken, but to no avail. That arrow-sharp quiver, that angel-haired and ethereal falsetto, never sleeps – it's his fate and fortune to huff, puff, and ache like his Canadian musical kin – and that voice persists through most of the wonderful homemade tracks on Infiniheart, whether the backing sounds ring with Modest Mouse-like bucolic briskness ("Clinically Dead"), noodle and bleat with Sonic Youthful retuned, modal monkey business and glitchy-and-scratchy beats ("Kill Me in My Sleep"), or clatter like a junkyard massive of sampled dog barks, tin-can gamelan clang, and fuzzed thud ("J.C.'s Head on the Cross"). Imagine Young coming up with a suede-fringed laptop in a post-'90s Alternative Nation – like Shaky, VanGaalen is intent on putting that seraphic wheeze through its paces, finding it an infinitely flexible instrument.

Did I mention that this archetypal bedroom rocker made the majority of these songs – about stoned dads, cats getting eaten by coyotes, and Philip Dick-like human farming scenarios – in the fertile confines of his sleeping quarters, supposedly on a mere four tracks, over the past decade? Bet Young never had to do that.

Still, home-recordists are everywhere, feeding the current singer-songwriter stampede (dance between those lo-fi, low-flying teardrops). VanGaalen, nonetheless, vaults beyond any hamstrung feats of technical derring-do with his sheer knack for writing tunes that are less catchy than contagious. His best songs, like "After the Afterlife," possess a feverish, tubercular beauty that sticks in the craw like a glistening, iridescent sickness. "With all the points of glowing light / And all the panes of mirrored glass / I don't have to look at you / I can stare at your reflection instead .You don't know me / But I'd like to build us a home in the trees," he spookily croaks in the finger-picked and cello-laced minor-key mood swing "Build a Home Like a Bee" before turning around and letting his paranoia slip on the corrosively beautiful "Red Blood": "Who you waiting for? / I hope it's not me ... Flesh and blood and broken bones was I / Until I left it all behind in the gold mine / Now that mockingbird sings like a car alarm / Does the song that she's been singing keep our hearts warm?" Distorted guitar grumbles to the fore, but never mind, this kind of songwriting will warm us. Chad VanGaalen plays with Wolf Parade Wed/4-Thurs/5, the Independent, SF. Sold out. (415) 771-1421. (Kimberly Chun)

Jean-Claude Vannier

L'Enfant Assassin des Mouches (Finders Keepers)

It's not often you are made to feel that you have been transported to the set of a film you don't completely understand. Once you are there, all you can do is ride the twists and turns, navigating a mirage of costume changes, extravagant set designs, and exotic passages and knowing that you really have no idea what will come next. That's the sense of adventure – and the story told by sounds, not words – that swirls in so many directions on Jean-Claude Vannier's lost-and-now-found 1972 concept classic, L'Enfant Assassin des Mouches (The Child Fly Killer).

Best known as Serge Gainsbourg's collaborator, producer, and arranger, Vannier has a history that's deeply connected to all sides of French avant-pop in the late '60s and early '70s. It's his fingerprint, his melodies, and his mastermind behind Gainsbourg's most daring and compelling moments, such as Histoire de Melody Nelson (Polygram International, 1971). He worked with Brigitte Fontaine and Gallic pop stars of the moment and wrote film scores, all the while honing his skill as a composer equally influenced by Stravinsky, Bacharach, and psychedelia.

Without the presence of a vocalist taking time and precedence over the sounds, Vannier's solo outing let him go even wider and weirder. Throughout L'Enfant Assassin des Mouches, you get a prevailing sense of a cast of characters and the hint of a really odd narrative. Somehow managing to combine elements of musique concrete, orchestral pop, and classical strings as well as prog-rock premonitions, free jazz, and a whole lot of psychedelic undertones, Vannier made an album that stands on its own as a beautiful and totally bizarre creation. (Irwin Swirnoff)