Little Flames

Supporting the biggest band in Britain right now would be a daunting task for anyone, so spare a thought for Little Flames. In a different setting, their light-hearted rock charade, which could be the Pixies exchanging chords and place mats with The Coral at various intervals, would probably go down a storm. Here tonight, amidst the football chants, under whelmed parents chaperoning their offspring and impatient revellers waiting to “look good” on Rock City’s dancefloor, they’re merely background music. They don’t do anything wrong. In fact, they sound fairly competent and accomplished considering this is undoubtedly the biggest crowd they’ve ever played in front of. What they do lack, however, is that one ace up their sleeve – a killer tune. Hopefully that will come with time, while the experience of playing sold out venues on this tour will surely stand them in good stead and exalt the pangs of hunger for fame as they strive for perfection to an arid level.

Twelve months can be a long time in this game – almost like an eternity in fact. This time last year the Arctic Monkeys were Soulseek and Limewire’s best kept secret, an online activist’s fantasy come true, as at least one of their MP3s landed in more inboxes than the last Trojan virus. On their last headline visit to Nottingham, they pulled about 20 people on a Monday night at The Social, a free showcase for unsigned acts. Tonight, touts outside are offering sixty notes to buy spare tickets – over four times the face value – for a gig that had sold out within an hour of being announced. How times have changed then…

…even if it doesn’t appear to have changed the band. If anything, they seem as though they want to distance themselves from their new found fame, as Alex Turner, pin-up poster boy in bedrooms, common rooms and student unions the nation wide, emerges hidden away beneath his hooded top before opening with a nervous ‘Riot Van’. Definitely not the hallmark of a top celebrity then. It takes about a minute or so for the band to get in their stride but when they do, they really leave most of the competition standing at the gates.

Ignore the fact that their audience is now largely made up of the lads-on-the-piss two gigs a year morons who infiltrate Oasis gigs to chant obscenities and football songs throughout, while anyone expecting a volcano! sized wheel re-invention on the technicalities of music should turn away now. Turner and co. clearly aren’t about cleverer than thou pseudo elitism by way of eight minute arpeggios into candid avant-garde territory. Instead, their seemingly effortless production line of ready-made anthems should be admired and revered, as the Arctic Monkeys are basically saying what 90% of semi-intelligent suburbians are thinking, and do you know what the ironic thing is? Most of the subject matter of what they’re singing about lambastes their new army of paying customers!

‘View From The Afternoon’ and ‘Mardy Bum’ are despatched early on like a schoolkid sent on a tea bag errand to the corner shop by Aunt Mabel on a Sunday afternoon, while the bouncer baiting ‘Ritz To The Rubble’, scenester-baiting ‘Fake Tales Of San Francisco’ and oik-baiting ‘A Certain Romance’ induce mass singalongs that drown out the vacuous “Nottingham” and “Sheffield” chants that punctuate every stony silence in-between songs tonight. What’s even more apparent is that the band themselves seem tighter as a unit than the proverbial duck’s squeezebox, none more apparent than in the jazz-infused breakdown of ‘Vampires Is A Bit Strong But…’ and the seemingly hoary ode to self-loathing that is ‘Who The Fuck Are Arctic Monkeys?’, where Turner sings quite apologetically “We all want someone to shout for/we all want someone to adore/but heroes just aren’t what they seem/when you’ve been where we’ve been.” What appears to be a straightforward rant about not getting carried away with being famous then goes all Who live in Leeds during the middle eight and…hey presto, the Arctic Monkeys have gone prog!

Of the other newbies played this evening, ‘Cigarette Smoker Fiona’ sounds like the gluttonous sibling of ‘Still Take You Home’, while 'Leave Before The Lights Come On' is another of their increasingly familiar three-minute bile driven epistles to the ups (but mostly downs) of Sheffield life.

An hour later, having played virtually their entire back catalogue and beyond they’re gone, no frills, no encore, but then what more could anyone possibly have expected? Alex Turner’s sumptuous begging to bring on the backlash looks like it will be falling on deaf ears for the time being at least, as they hurtle towards the magic million mark in album sales. By the end of the year they’ll be headlining arenas to fully complete the transition from zeros to heroes. Catch them while you can still see them, you won’t be disappointed…

Photos by Mark Moore