Debut album from Sheffield-born quartet the Arctic Monkeys. Even before the release of this first offering, the band were being touted as the next big thing. With their mix of melodic pop, fused with a punk-garage edge, their sound appeals to the alternative rock crowd. Their first single. 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor', which went straight in at No.1 in the UK singles chart, is included.

Jan 2006

Nationwide Mercury Prize Winner 2006

So here it is... the most anticipated debut album of 2006, it's the Arctic Monkeys. The one. The album that's going to make all those drunken nights and rows with the missus and daft conversations in sweaty clubs all make sense. The album that's going to make the indie kid dance like a twat next to the heavyweight skinhead and the shy girl whose sister went to your school.

As the legend goes, with a frenzied fanbase spreading like an Australian bush fire across the Net, Arctic Monkeys were able to shoot straight to Number One with their debut single 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor', and sell out gigs to massive crowds singing along to every song. Now with many of the original mp3 demo tracks re-recorded and a few new ones thrown in for good measure, 'Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not' is the album that has already spoken to the kids and will continue to do so throughout 2006.

Perfectly soundtracking the mixed bag of everything that it is about to live in the 21st century, 'Whatever People Say I Am...' is a melting pot of jerky and angular guitar riffs and frenetic beats, ala Franz Ferdinand, but it manages to remain fresh and innovative with gnarled poetics and a brand of insightful lyrical humour that rivals last year's bright hopes, the Kaiser Chiefs.

Tackling subjects as simple and universal as eyeing up fit girls ('Still Take You Home'), small-town related boredom and associated acts of idle thuggery ('Riot Van'), to scenester-baiting ('Fake Tales Of San Francisco'), 'Whatever People Say I Am...' is an album of many voices, the perfect album to stick on and sing out loud and mean every word because it's all happened to everyone of us, times many.

• NME (14/01/06, p.33) - 10 (out of 10) - "Every touchstone of Great British Music ^is] covered."
  Music Week (14/01/2006, p.26) - "...certainly lives up to the hype that it has created."
  Q (03/06, p.102) - 4 (out of 5) - "...they have made ^a great record]... has that edge, that thrill... ^a] fine debut"
  Uncut (03/06, p.86) - 5 (out of 5) - "Warm, witty, full of great tunes, WHATEVER... will touch nerves you forgot you had."
  Rolling Stone (p.87) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "The unassuming foursome of nineteen- and twenty-year-olds specializes in propulsion, momentum and repetition -- in succinct riffs and snarly, wordy lyrics..."
  Spin (p.62) - Ranked #03 in Spin's "The 40 Best Albums of 2006" -- "Beneath the scenester cool and post-Pavement guitar fuzz. WHATEVER PEOPLE SAY I AM is exuberant teenage garage pop..."
  Entertainment Weekly (p.60) - "Guitars and drums ricochet off each other; riffs are bounced around like soccer balls. With their kicky hooks, the songs owe more to Warped Tour thrashers than to stoic post-punk inspirations..." -- Grade: A-
  Q (p.126) - Ranked #1 in Q Magazine's "100 Greatest Albums of 2006" -- "^B]ristling with energy and plugged into the era's social conditions and colloquialisms."
  Uncut (p.86) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "Alex Turner's breathless delivery is faultless, a foaming cocktail of lust and longing, occasionally brimming over into Costello-esque rage."
  Mojo (Publisher) (p.102) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "Fashion and hype be damned -- this is thrilling, incontrovertible evidence of a major new talent in our midst."
  Mojo (Publisher) (p.56) - Ranked #82 in Mojo's "100 Modern Classics" -- "Arctic Monkeys delivered a debut bristling with Modish urgency and teenage angst."
  Clash (magazine) (p.74) - "^T]here really was no doubt that in this modern punk and hip-hop inspired vignette of reality bites, and Northern colloquialisms, the Monkeys had defined the zeitgeist..."

Reportedly the fastest-selling debut in British history at the time of its early-2006 release, the Arctic Monkeys' WHATEVER PEOPLE SAY I AM, THAT'S WHAT I'M NOT is a brash, hook-filled album that immediately warrants music fans' attention, if perhaps not all of the pre-release hype. Clearly taking notes on the evolution of U.K. punk, the Sheffield-based band reveal the influence of revered predecessors such as the Jam and the Clash, while most notably evoking the Libertines in their youthful, hood-rat persona. On this hyperactive 13-track set, singer/guitarist Alex Turner is armed with an arsenal of sharply observed middle-class narratives (a la the Streets), which are propelled by wiry guitar lines and formidable rhythms that, at times, verge on funk (see Bloc Party). Highlights of this much-lauded disc include the raucous "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor," the woozy "Riot Van" (one of the record's few quieter moments), and the lurching "When the Sun Goes Down." Like Franz Ferdinand's scruffier (and considerably less effete) kid brothers, the Arctic Monkeys prove that the hyperbole of the U.K. music press occasionally has roots in an impressive reality.

The U.K. music scene is notorious for launching previously unknown bands to the heights of stardom on word-of-mouth gossip and music-press hype alone. Arctic Monkeys took that phenomenon to an entirely new level when they sold 110,000 copies of their 2005 debut LP, WHATEVER PEOPLE SAY I AM, THAT'S WHAT I'M NOT, in the first two days of its release. An undeniably accessible (and bankable) mix of Brit Pop, U.K. punk, and hip-hop swagger has led fans and critics to dub them the next Oasis.