When I were a lad, I started listening to local techno music, recorded at Rezerection. It was shit but I wanted to fit in, so that was for social, Guns N Roses was for home. Then, when Nirvana appeared, I made the split, hung about with the ones still listening to shite like Ultra Sonic but grew my hair like Kurt Cobain. Then, round about school-leaving time, everything changed: a band appeared, like some mythical hero, to unite everyone.

They were Oasis, and all of a sudden it was cool to like guitar music. The Rez died a death, people started wearing shirts instead of tops, hairdressers lost a bit of their young-male business. Oasis sang songs from your perspective, and, though it’s assumed that all their lyrics were always pish, they could occasionally cut through all the bullshit – see the caustic ‘Cigarettes & Alcohol’– and, like, ‘really talk to you’. With a million songs about breaking free form humdrum existence in rundown areas; they were a great band for a 16 year-old dolebird.

But now they’re pretty dull and boring and no-one’s ever really taken their place. They were all too arty, or too rubbish, and some weren’t even interested (Radiohead). So we got left with the ballad-side of Oasis writ large, in Coldplay and the rest, and no-one to do the songs you’d listen to before a night-out, the ones you listened to after signing on, etc. Until – drum roll – the Arctic Monkeys. In case you didn’t know -

Arctic Monkeys – The band that ‘appeared from nowhere’. They built up a fanbase locally, someone stuck their songs on the internet, they struck a chord. Signed to Domino, home of Franz Ferdinand, first proper single went to Number 1. Second one’s just followed its lead. Album is heading to the same position.

Update – This album’s now the fastest-selling of all time – in the UK.

So, it’s about time for the backlash, for contrary types like me to piss on their parade, to moan that it’s been done before, but better, that it’s nothing new (what the fuck is, exactly?), and that they’ll all be forgotten about in years to come while Highway 61 Revisited will always endure.

I can’t do it, though. ‘Whatever People Say I Am . . .’ isn’t perfect, there’s a couple songs that I’d gladly scrub from the album, but that’s true of all the so-called ‘greats’ – I’ve never met an album yet that doesn’t have at least one minger in among the gems. Out of thirteen tracks, ten are good-to-great; for any album that’s a good average.

The majority are punk-ish, loud, with choruses designed to be shouted en masse at gigs. ‘I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor’, ‘Fake Tales of San Francisco’, ‘From the Ritz To The Rubble’. A couple are a little winsome, more reflective, with dry humour: ‘Mardy Bum’, ‘Riot Van’. Some start off winsome and reflective then go punky: ‘The Sun Goes Down’.

They above are all great enough songs but what gives them that little extra, what sets them apart, are the lyrics and the accent.

Alex Turner, Monkeys’ lead singer, has already been set apart form the other primates, voted #1 in NME’s Cool List (bet you he’s embarrassed by that), but on the evidence of this he does have something about him. Good lyrics are never essential for me, it’s more about tunes, but when they work they’re the icing on the top, and with Turner’s they definitely work. Just the way he informs us that ‘Their ain’t no love no /Montagues or Capulets’, or the sneering tone of ‘the band were fucking wank/and I’m not having a nice time’.

He’s John Cooper Clarke reborn, only with tunes, squeezed into a Donnie Darko lookalike’s body. He’s got the working class teenage experience down to a tee – pissing off the police, just for a chase on the slightly sad ‘Riot Van’, trying to placate/understand/avoid your huffy girlfriend on the brilliantly titled ‘Mardy Bum’. Even when the tunes let him down you find yourself listening for the lyrics.

On ‘A Certain Romance’ it all comes together. The best is saved for last and we get a study of so-called ‘chavs’ set to music, and sang by someone who, while separate enough to be able to look and comment on his environment, just can’t shake off the sentimental attachment to it. A place where trackie bottoms are tucked into socks, where there’s only music so there’s new ringtones, where kids fight with pool cues, where your friends overstep the line, but you just can’t get angry, because they’re your friends . . .

I predict, predictably, that teenagers across the land will call the Arctic Monkeys the greatest band of all time, and Alex Turner the greatest songwriter, and if they believe it then that makes it true – just like it was with Nirvana and Oasis.

They aren’t, neither were the other two, but all three are pretty great in their own way, so let’s let the younger generation have their heroes.

Iain Bahlaj lives in Fife, Scotland. His short stories have appeared in Front & Centre, Fife Fringe, Chapman, Pulp.net and The Macallan Shorts 3 and 5. His novel, 'Tilt' was published in 2003 (Pulp Books, London). The short story 'Sugar' is a prequel to 'Tilt.' Iain currently works as a night-shift shelf-stacker, while working on a novel about vampires, in this spare time. To visit Iain's Showcase on this website, click here

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.