In the video for “Juicebox,” the first single from the Strokes’ desultory new album, “First Impressions of Earth” (RCA), hipster comic David Cross plays a clueless disc jockey who thinks the band’s name is Stroke and introduces them as “part of the New York sound that is exploding all over New York and the tristate area.” It’s a self-mocking gesture, poking fun at the Strokes’ overheated fame and firstmover status in the New York music scene that broke nationally (and internationally) after 2001.

“You guys are huge, huge in Europe, right?”Cross says.”Are you hoping that some of that success translates back here in the States?” The band rolls its eyes. However, as in all good jokes, there’s a germ of truth. On the same MTV web page as the video for “Juicebox” is an article from October 2001 headlined “The Strokes: Huge In England.” Meanwhile, they’re foundering here at home.

It’s been a hard and swift comedown. “Is This It?” – the Strokes’ 2001 debut – was a precise and charmingly stylized collection of songs that launched a thousand retro-rock imitators. The band’s adorable sleaziness made them ideal cover subjects. For a record industry and rock press starved for bankable new talent, the Strokes looked like saviors.

In the face of such promiscuous enthusiasm, the album sold embarrassingly slowly. (It did eventually go platinum in the U.S., but took its time about it.) The title soon became an unfortunate punch line as listeners and industry insiders alike began to ask, “Well, is this it?”

“Room on Fire,” the band’s lackluster 2003 follow-up,only heightened suspicions that the Strokes might be no-hit wonders; a band whose music and sales would never live up to its hype. Despite a sizable marketing campaign, “Room on Fire” was quickly doused. It never made a dent on radio, and has sold a modest 577,000 copies to date. “First Impressions of Earth” is the band’s third – and one suspects final – chance to live up to its first impression.

It starts off well enough. “You Only Live Once,” the opening track, has the easy swagger of a Spoon song. The guitars are bright and catchy, Julian Casablancas’s delivery playful and confident. It sounds, for the moment, like the band isn’t writing with the weight of industry expectations on its shoulders.

Alas, it doesn’t last. The album soon settles into a pattern of throwing it at the wall to see what sticks. Instead of a single new direction, the album offers half a dozen – none very convincing. “Juicebox,” the lead single, has a thrubbing metal bass line that sounds like something off of Nirvana’s “Bleach,” though Casablancas’s prep school yelp is no match for Kurt Cobain’s animal yowl. “Razorblade” and “On the Other Side” dust off the neutered, neon guitar sound of “Room on Fire,” and are not without charm. “15 Minutes” is played over a chiming guitar part that sounds enough like Sonic Youth that Lee Renaldo ought to get a royalty check.

On “Electricityscape,” Casablancas sings what amounts to a working method for the album: “I swear I’ll give it back tomorrow / but for now I think I’ll just borrow / all the words from that song / and all the chords from that other song I heard yesterday.”Everything’s new, but nothing’s original.

In the end, the attempts at boundary pushing and playing against type only reinforce the band’s limitations. “Vision of Division” turns the reins over to the intricate guitar work of Albert Hammond Jr., who has always played like a wild horse with a bit in his mouth. But, like any animal domesticated too long, he doesn’t know what do with his freedom – he just trots around and kicks a little before turning the reins back over to Casablancas.

The biggest departure on the album is also the most discouraging. “Ask Me Anything” sounds so much like the work of Stephin Merritt that it sent me scouring the liner notes to see if he’d any hand in it. The off-kilter oompah-oompah electronic beat is pure Magnetic Fields, and the gloomy crooning is quintessential Merritt. The difference, of course, is in the lyrics.Whereas Merritt turns his songs into clever plays on words and tiny black comedies, Casablancas contents himself mostly with repeating the line “I’ve got nothing to say” over and over.

And that says it all. Style – however stylish – can only masquerade as substance for so long before it’s found out. For the Strokes, that time has come.