Arctic Monkey's - That's What I'm Not (2006)

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Arctic Monkeys: 'That's What I'm Not'

Fresh Air from WHYY, February 22, 2006 · The British music press is hailing a new band, the Arctic Monkeys, as being as big as the Beatles -- or at least as big as Oasis. The first-week release of the band's debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, sold over 118,000 copies, more than the rest of the Top 20 albums combined.

Rock critic Ken Tucker explores the Arctic Monkeys phenomenon and suggests you might be more interested in another young British band: Clearlake, whose third album, Amber, has also just been released in the United States.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5228268

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Salon's Audiofile notes:

The reaction to "Whatever People Say I'm Am" among established rock writers in the U.S. has been almost uniformly positive -- surprisingly so, perhaps, considering the thick accent and dialect employed by lead singer Alex Turner. Leading critics Kelefa Sanneh and Sasha Frere-Jones have given the album rave write-ups in the New York Times (Times Select required) and the New Yorker, respectively, with Sanneh, in particular, won over by Turner's wise-beyond-his-years lyrics: "He delivers pithy, unpretentious descriptions of a teenage world defined by daydreams and nightlife. And he has an uncanny way of evoking Northern English youth culture while neither romanticizing it nor sneering at it. " The New York Post (four stars out of four), the Los Angeles Times (four stars out of four) and Newsday (grade A), meanwhile, all give the record the maximum possible rating in their reviews. In Britain, too, the Arctic Monkeys have enjoyed a mountain of good press -- NME, finding itself in the unusual position of reporting on the breathless excitement surrounding a new band rather than generating it, has led the way with a 10 out of 10 review, and a 5th place for "Whatever People Say I Am" in its recent "Best British Albums of All Time" list, while the Guardian also gives the LP full marks. The band won the best breakthough act at the Brit Awards, an accolade that had the "dull thud of inevitability" –- despite it's undoubted merit –- according to the Guardian, and picked up three prizes at the slightly hipper NME Awards, including an unprecedented best new band/best band double.