Arctic Monkeys

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

Whatever People Say I Am captures the band mashing up the Strokes and the Libertines at will, jamming too many angular riffs into too short a space, tearing through the songs as quickly as possible. 

Essentially this is a stripped-down, punk rock record with every touchstone of Great British Music covered

Arctic Monkeys bundle their influences together with such compelling urgency and snotty confidence that they sound like a kind of culmination: the band all the aforementioned bands have been leading up to.

It's not a classic, most of us will be sure of that. This is good pop; this is excellent, dirty, fun pop. This is the stuff girls and boys will dance to in scrotty concrete jungle indie clubs, this is the stuff people who don't even like rock and roll will like.

While their debut is not entirely original, it bristles with energy, passion and an anthemic sensibility of its own devising.

Whatever People Say is less obsessed with retro flavor than with uninhibited rock & roll, complete with a cocky but utterly charming leader.

Don't come at this like it's some kind of holy artifact, just treat like a rock record. Because it is one of the best (though not quite the best) rock records in recent years.

Blunt and bratty, emotionally pubescent even.

The Arctic Monkeys aren’t worth all of the giddy hyperbole they’ve received in recent months, but Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not is still as fun and crafty a debut as you’re likely to hear this year, one that kicks as much ass on your way to work as it does at a party or while you’re puttering around the house.

Their riff-heavy songs are brashly delivered – favouring attitude over technique – but it's Turner's keenly observed vignettes of bored text-messaging teens that really connect.