Pitchfork

With the Walkmen wasting away again in Louisiana-ville and the Strokes having nosedived from grace down to Earth, this latest posse of fine-feeling, fresh-faced youngsters creeps in to take its own stab at NYC's other contested crown. Vocalist Stefan Marolachakis even has a name pretty much as ridiculous as Leithauser or Casablancas, and a similar leering delivery. Here he enters with the apt taunt, "You can pout all you want/ Some of us won't fall for it," alongside cymbal-heavy percussion that suggests a pack of little leaguers shaking the chain-linked to razz the opposing team. Replace his "you" with an NYC band of your choice for a tasty beef soufflé.

And for a good three minutes the End of the World has us, holding "Last Cast" slightly aloft, taking it for a few well-timed dips and across a steady bridge, Marolachakis' elongated vowels gluing the whole thing together. Yet where the above acts boast five, the End are only three, and their basic guitar-bass-drums template gets stretched thin here-- there's really no reason "Last Cast" needs to stagger well past the four-minute mark, and all that constant fence-rattling grows tiresome. The result: a fine but by no means monumental candidate for the back half of the next Yes New York comp.