The truth is, on the cusp of the 20th and 21st centuries, you’d have been hard-pressed to find many people outside of the 212 area code talking much about a New York City rock “scene.” But when the Strokes emerged in late 2000 to play a pair of dates at the Mercury Lounge and the Bowery Ballroom, it touched off a period during which it often seemed that few could talk about anything else. Coupling stateside word-of-mouth with UK fandom stoked by NME’s weekly need to go into complete apoplexy over a band no one had ever heard of, the Strokes soon became something of a lightning rod, summoning acclaim and backlash in equal measure and in extremis. Music bloggers were sent in to mitigate the nonsensical frenzy of hyping and hating, but they only ended up making the problem much, much worse. In fact, things have gotten so bad now that Axl Rose is actually convinced that hanging out at Misshapes will somehow make his songs better. The sad fact is, he’s probably right.

Throughout it all, the Strokes have managed to persist, surviving not only the smack talk that comes from being top-of-the-heap, but also producer woes, the requisite chemical dependencies, internecine conflicts, the nation’s two-week flirtation with electroclash, and the dangers that arise from having to work in close proximity to Drew Barrymore. But one demon they’ve never been able to quite banish is their own aesthetic restlessness. Having staked their claim with a sound that straddled the then-emerging garage-rock and neo-new wave trendlets, the band has been struggling to decide whether to embrace that style or run away from it.

Their third album, First Impressions Of Earth, marks the Strokes’ first decisive move away from their trademarked sound. At least in part. While plenty of tunes from Impressions would fit right alongside the previous two records, there’s an equal dose of tracks that are more brash and melodramatic than anything they’d done previously. And while critical reviews of Impressions have been decidedly mixed, the band has nevertheless found success on tour, selling out dates and bringing the rock. That success continued last night at D.A.R. Constitution Hall, as the Strokes performed a loud and raucous set to the sustained delight of an incredibly vocal crowd.