Arctic Monkeys

Like Albert Finney's Saturday Night and Sunday Morning factory worker whose words name it, the Arctic Monkeys' debut LP is equal parts ale-soaked smart-arse and disenchanted romantic. Expect saloon bar witticism ("Fake Tales of San Francisco"), flailing nihilism ("I Bet That You Look Good...") and bitter rumination ("When the Sun Goes Down"). Smart, spunky, spiky.

Not since Oasis first lumbered onstage in the Nineties has England's already hyperbolic
press worked itself into the kind of critical lather that has greeted Arctic Monkeys. One
U.K. publication called them "Our Generation's Most Important Band" and declared the
Monkeys' debut, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, the fifth-greatest Brit
album ever -- the same week it was released. The British press is only slightly mo... More >

The great thing about this album is how untranscendent it is, as if these lads know the guitar-band pleasures are cons. Sing-along tunes? Breakneck momentum? Next-big-thing ambition? Saturday-night swindles every one. Instead Alex Turner and crew evoke club life as it is actually experienced. They sound like not knowing the doorman, like moving on a girl you think isn't pretty enough, like missing the bus in a leather jacket that doesn't keep out the cold. Many details are too U.K.-specific for Yank-yob gratification. But aesthetes will come to enjoy Turner's nuanced adenoids and his bandmates' thought-through arrangements. (Grade - A-)