Arctic Monkeys, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not Review

Good Points
It's not the Kaiser Chiefs. There is some potential in there somewhere.

Bad Points
Libertines/Babyshambles clone, no individual personality. All the hype leads to raised expectations.

General Comments
There can't be a music fan alive who hasn't read somewhere (probably the eNeMEy) that the Arctic Monkeys are the new saviours of indie guitar rock. Except they aren't. Ok, they're a bunch of teenagers from Sheffield who like the Libertines and the Jam a lot. They write songs about being young and about the "streets" and they jump around a lot and supposedly have really great live shows. Oh, and they got their start from circulating demos via the internet. So now they're getting hyped up because apparently the people have spoken.



The problem is that I was expecting a work of brilliance akin to Up the Bracket by the Libs or perhaps Different Class by Pulp as they keep getting lyrically compared to Jarvis Cocker.



What I got instead was a bunch of kids writing cliched lyrics about hookers and drugs and pulling against a backdrop of guitars that could be any number of current bands. It's not bad, but it's certainly not the greatest thing I've ever heard. While I'd rather hear this than, say, the Kaiser Chiefs, Coldplay or James Blunt, I don't see this being more than another flash in the pan hype band that can't live up to the expectations because they were never more than mediocre to begin with, they just have good PR instincts.