Once again, someone writing in the New Yorker puts to pen the thoughts that I've been loosely throwing about on the state of Rock n' Roll...

Jerry Lee Lewis was rock and roll. Gene Pitney wasn't. The Pretenders were rock and roll. The Bee Gees weren't. Elvis Costello was rock and roll for a while, and then he wasn't.

By this standard, the moody crooning of Creed and friends doesn't qualify; nor does the self-effacing arena rock of the Dave Matthews Band. But there does seem to be a new crop of bands that favor short, spiky songs galvanized by angst and anger. If these bands?the White Stripes and the Strokes are the best known, and among the best?aren't exactly new, they're a return to something older and more distinctive: to the spirit of punk and, before that, of the British Invasion.