And talking of New York and backlash, the debut album by The Strokes is already the year's latest great but wonderfully pointless rock'n'roll debate.
This, their much-hyped debut album, is the work of a band that "will change your life forever", accordingto the NME.
Well, it is pretty good. A strangely exciting, scuffed-up blast of Big Apple punky art-rock - if it was a book, it would be Clinton Heylin's tome From the Velvets to the Voidoids: A Pre-Punk History for a Post-Punk World. It comes with many an echo of Iggy, Television, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, along with hints of The Fall, The Smiths, Wire and the last great American lo-fi art-rock band, Pavement.
At 11 tracks and just over 36 minutes, Is This It is an intense wiry little number, propelled by a choppy twin-guitar frontline, a way-down-the-back rhythm section and singer Julian Casablancas, a singer with an attractive mix of arch detachment and Iggy-swagger.
It begs those historic comparisons from the get-go, with the angular Television shapes it throws on the title track then the Velvet-rock of The Modern Age.
And so it goes on its aggressive twitchy, brittle way.
The Strokes manage to recall a transatlantic collision of those aforementioned Brits on Someday and Last Nite. They unwisely malign New York's finest on New York City Cops ( the track has been excised from US albums in the light of recent events), and execute some particularly fine Tom Verlaine-like guitar solos on Trying Your Luck and the terrific closing track Take It or Leave It.
An exercise in rock history regurgitation The Strokes may be, but that comes with a raw-boned urgency that still makes it compelling and worth that debate.
True, it only reminds me of albums that changed my life. But that'll do for now.
