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

Don’t be fooled, my friends. The Arctic Monkeys aren’t going to save rock & roll.

Don’t you just hate it when a wave of hype rides a band across the sea, from England all the way to the States, and all it does is just snowball until they’re all you hear about? It seems that everywhere you turn, your favorite indie music website/magazine is doing a feature on them, and they are being heralded as "the next (insert Strokes, Libertines, Sex Pistols, The Clash, Oasis, The Killers, or The Smiths here)," and the phrase ‘saviors of rock & roll’ seems to pop up somewhere or other in most of those articles. By the time their debut album makes it to your stereo, you’re already too burned out to enjoy the record—so you spin it once; and it ends up living in the middle of your album collection that you show off to new people you meet to give yourself a few extra ‘scene points.’ And, even if the album is actually pretty decent, it really doesn’t even matter- because, by the time it gets out, Pete Doherty’s done something moronic again; or some other useless muck is clogging up the musical media’s attention and you never hear of the band again.

Well, judging by the signs, that would seem to be the case surrounding England’s latest export, the oddly named little indie rockers Arctic Monkeys. Don’t be fooled, my friends. The Arctic Monkeys aren’t going to save rock & roll. I doubt they’ll ever make it onto the plateau of memory with Morrissey & Co., or The Clash. And, I doubt they’ll ever oust The Strokes in some people’s minds as the ‘saviors of rock.’ But, what I can say for the Monkeys, is that they are a strong band. And, they do possess a new-ish, fairly unique sound. And—most importantly— they actually do rock. What you’ll find here isn’t anything revolutionary, but instead one heck of a good indie rock record.

I’m going to be honest, I never did get into the Libertines that much. Doherty attracted too much attention with his drug-addled antics, and the music suffered for it. They showed promise; but that’s it. I am a fair Strokes fan (I would never use the phrase ‘saviors of rock,’ though), and I have that special place in my heart most of us do for The Smiths. What I’m getting at is that the Monkeys’ are comparable to all of the above mentioned, and do a fantastic job at combining all the styles to their advantage. You get the wit of Morrissey, the rock of the Strokes, and that flair people seemed to find somewhere deep within the Libertines.

I’ve been spinning both the new Strokes record, and this album just about evenly lately; and I have to admit; I’m enjoying Whatever People Say I Am a heck of a lot more than First Impressions of Earth. The lyrics are delivered in such a jaunty, bouncing fashion that it just seems to fuse completely with the music. The Monkeys really are a band actually almost worth the hype surrounding them. Highlights include catchy first single "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor," "Fake Tales Of San Francisco," "Still Take You Home," and "Riot Van." The cuts stay tight, and the songs really flow well together. This is, most definitely, a record worth checking out.

(Domino Recording Co.)