Arctic Monkeys
Five Minutes With Arctic Monkeys

For the uninformed, this Sheffield quartet have been causing a buzz of late in the capital with some boisterous and overpopulated live performances; shows so packed that even Steve Lamacq (yes, the Steve Lamacq) couldn’t get in.

‘Fake Tales Of San Francisco,’ featuring a riff so simple yet so addictive it hurts, is three minutes of the Monkeys doing what they do best, namely offering sharp but funny social commentary in a South Yorkshire patois over bursts of punky, poppy, sometimes ska inflected, guitar.

With lyrics like ‘you’re not from New York, you’re from Rotherham / so get off the bandwagon and put down the handbook,’ they might just be the antidote to the Poptones roster.

‘From The Ritz To The Rubble,’ describing encounters between overzealous bouncers and inebriated clubbers, starts slowly with a spoken introduction but ends frantically with overdriven guitars all over the shop. It’s the nearest you can get to their live show without actually being there. One for Mr Lamacq, then.

If five minutes with Arctic Monkeys is this much fun, god help us when the little blighters finally get around to releasing an album.