Albert J Hammond Jr's first album without The Strokes is chock full of good vibes. And when your dad notched up a string of classics during his own songwriting career, the pressure is definitely on. Young Albert tells Tony Clayton-Lea about branching out.

A buzzcut New York band influenced in the main by NYC progenitors Velvet Underground, Television, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, et al are in a commercial sense twiddling their thumbs. Their previous album, Room on Fire, failed to set the world alight, and so, as most of the members are no doubt pondering on the nature of fame, success and why things didn't really go according to plan (and yes, we're pointing the finger at you, Julian Casablancas), it is up to the band's most self-effacing and possibly most genial member to get his own finger out and present to the public a solo record.

On paper, in stark black and white, a solo record from a member of a band that promised so much but ultimately failed to deliver isn't something that immediately strikes you as a brilliant idea. As it turns out, Albert Hammond Jr's debut, Yours to Keep, is the best record The Strokes have never made. So Albert is right to have Good Vibrations as his home ring tone; in fact, Albert is good vibes personified. He's just fixed his television cable point and he's mighty pleased with himself. He also points out that since he has installed the Beach Boys song onto his phone he has never answered it without being happy. Truly, here is a man who fails to look at life with anything other than a broad, beaming smile.

"The idea of making records has been there since I was a kid," says Hammond Jr. This is not a huge surprise considering that his music biz father notched up more than several songwriting hits with the likes of It Never Rains in Southern California and co-writes such as The Air that I Breathe (The Hollies) and I Need You (Leo Sayer).

Yours to Keep, explains Hammond Jr, has been around for a couple of years. "The songs are about two years old, although I wasn't even really thinking in terms of a record when I was writing them. In time, and through working with other people, though, it took on a life of its own." The finished album features Hammond on vocals and guitar, with Josh Lattanzi on bass and Matt Romano on drums. "What I wanted was to produce a record in a way that I wanted to hear it. Sometimes, people produce music in a way you'd rather not hear yourself, or indeed even like playing."

Whether Hammond Jr is pointedly making remarks about his connections with The Strokes is open to debate. It seems unlikely that he would have an axe to grind, so to speak, particularly when he says he had been playing his own demos to the band members for quite some time. Is he tired of having to explain to people that he has no plans to quit The Strokes?

"That question isn't as tiring, because it's one you can answer pretty quickly. The questions that are quite hard are ones that you know are trying to cause some kind of rift between me and the band. NME came to New York with the idea of digging up something that they could get a good headline from. As you know, talking about emotions and tensions can come out in ways that can be misinterpreted. Yet what's written has little or nothing to do with anyone or anything connected with the band.

"Everyone in The Strokes is friends, we love playing music. I love playing music with The Strokes, and I love playing music on my off time. That's all I've done - write songs on my down time and recorded them. One day I had some songs that I thought I could share with people, that made me and my friends feel good and that we thought other people might enjoy."

There's nothing sinister about the side project, insists Hammond Jr. "Music papers want something more exciting to print - like, 'oh what happened to The Strokes? Why is Albert Hammond making a record without them?' All that kind of stuff. The truth is that nothing happened - I just made a record. Sure, there are days when they don't like me and I don't like them, but that's what occurs between friends, right? That isn't a newspaper story, is it? That's more like life to me."

Only people who don't know him, Hammond Jr says, are surprised that he's the first member of The Strokes to make a solo record. As far as he knows, no one else from the band is working on a similar project.

"Like smart people they're enjoying their vacations. I want time off, but I think if you're doing something like a solo album you can't just stop at the making of it. It seems silly not to promote it through interviews and gigging, so I'm not saying no just to relax."

Yours to Keep is on Rough Trade