Arctic Monkeys - I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor (Domino)
UK release date: 17 October 2005
Listen! Can you smell something? Is that the kind of choppy guitar that makes John Music Reviewer scour his thesaurus for synonyms of 'angular'? Is that the sort of lyrical nod to robot dancing that will have the scenesters of next month gyrating in an I-heard-this-song- before-you fashion? I do believe it is!
All hail the Arctic Monkeys, Sheffield's greatest musical export since Pulp and the latest dubious recipients of that bi-weekly tag "Saviours of British Rock". Don't get me wrong, though - I Bet You Look Good is certainly one of this year's most essential rock tracks. Singer Alex Turner is, quite splendidly, the bastard offspring of Jarvis Cocker and Craig Nicholls, and leads the Monkeys headlong into a sound best described as a ska Franz Ferdinand minus the artyness, plus a Yorkshire twang.
The band are said to be revisionist rather than revivalist, which makes it okay to like them, apparently. It's just as well, really - this is cracking stuff, after all.