The man who was briefly rock 'n' roll's hottest lead singer is proclaiming himself thrilled with where his band is at today. "I could easily say there's things we would've done differently in the past," he explains. "But then we wouldn't be at this point now, and I'm so happy with where we're at right this second."

It sounds like pure spin. But I'm not sure Julian Casablancas is physically capable of spinning.

Over the phone from New York in advance of an extensive Canadian tour, the soft-spoken Strokes frontman greets most questions with a lengthy "Mmmmmm," contemplating his response before reverting to actual words. He's polite and utterly earnest. He mumbles, trails off, leaves sentences unfinished. Asked about rock bands that he influenced, he goes off on a tangent about the merits of hip hop. And for all the talk of aloofness, he's noticeably self-conscious.

At one point, I inquire whether he's more comfortable with the media than he was a few years ago, when he was notoriously difficult to deal with. "I don't know about comfortable," he says with a laugh. "I think I'm learning. I'm always trying to figure out how to do things the right way. I'm not there yet, but I definitely feel a little more in control. But then again, that's not saying much."

So when Casablancas insists he couldn't be happier with the direction in which The Strokes are going, I'm inclined to believe him. And considering that he's finally able to take a clear-headed view of his place in the rock world, perhaps it makes perfect sense.

For all the bravado they projected, The Strokes weren't ready for the impact of Is This It - the 2001 debut that put them on countless magazine covers, revived the notion of a New York City music scene and put guitar rock back on the map. Swept up in the moment, they lived it up - the drinking, the drugs, the fraternizing with A-list stars. And, when the time came to record a follow-up, they had little idea of where to go from there.

"We didn't want it to sound like the first one," Casablancas says, a bit wistfully. "We always want to do something new and step forward. We just didn't really have the knowledge of how to do it ... and on tour for two years, we just got carried away and our development was thwarted by the incessant touring and partying. It was great, but we didn't really know what was happening."

They wound up unable to leave their comfort zone, so much so that they ditched producer Nigel Godrich, whom they'd brought on board to shoot for something different, and returned to Is This It producer Gordon Raphael. What happened, in the end, was an album that did sound almost exactly like the first one - the same heavy leaning on their rock forefathers, the same disaffected vocals, the same chord progression. And coinciding with the inevitable backlash (were these guys really rock's saviours, or just a bunch of rich kids in leather jackets?), Room on Fire squandered most of their goodwill.

Casablancas now recognizes it was a blessing in disguise. "I almost couldn't have planned it any better," he says. "Because if we'd gotten bigger success on the second record, we'd probably be over."

Instead, the fallout prompted them to take a break. Casablancas cut back on his drinking, which had apparently gotten out of control, got married and returned with a new focus. His bandmates, to varying degrees, did likewise. And what emerged earlier this year was a new album that marked the departure they'd hoped for three years ago.

The first impression of First Impressions, actually, is that The Strokes have been listening to the bands they helped spawn - particularly on Juicebox, the single that bore a distinct resemblance to Franz Ferdinand. But Casablancas isn't having any of that.

"The most modern band that I'm seriously influenced by is Nirvana," he says. He allows, briefly, that "there are little things that other bands do that are cool," citing the Arctic Monkeys as an example that "moves you forward, makes you want to up the ante." But, mostly, he seems motivated by the possibility of getting away from the movement he helped create.

"There's bands where you see [The Strokes' influence] and you say 'OK, that's nice' - but then you wish you had inspired better," he says. "When I hear some band coming up that sounds like a mixture of one of our songs with some old song glued together to sound like a '60s song, I tend to not be excited by that - if anything I get a little embarrassed. I don't want to inspire people to copy. That's my one fear - it's not what I stand for."

One gets the sense, speaking with Casablancas, that his real fear is that The Strokes weren't original enough the first time around - that maybe those critics who dismissed them as Velvet Underground wannabes were right.

"It's hard to be original and good," he says. "You have to suck for a while. I feel like to some extent we've been doing that for the last few years. Even though people like a lot of the songs and they're good and I enjoy them, I still feel like we haven't done the best we can to be completely original."

It's that push, in the end, that validates Casablancas' insistence that The Strokes are in just the right place. "It's a good start," he says of First Impressions. "But I really want to use that as a new starting point. I hope we don't drop the ball."