Arctic Monkeys: The Best Band to Come out of England Since Oasis!? Debut Album Shows Promise

Every time a band comes out of England who’s mildly talented the amount of hype surrounding them tends to overshadow what the band is actually doing on record. They all get the same title from the British press as “The best band since Oasis,” which is a strange comparison because Oasis has only been adequately decent since their first two albums. The mere comparison just highlights that the desperation for something new is so great that even the mediocre bands have been elevated to levels far above what they deserve. 

That being said, the Arctic Monkeys are the newest, “Next Oasis,” but they’re not mediocre. But to earn the amount of praise they are getting you either have to do something completely different or do what’s already popular, but do it much better. Arctic Monkeys on their debut album, “Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not,” choose option B, but they fall short. The benchmark so far for the sort of rock that Arctic Monkeys play is Franz Ferdinand’s “You Could Have It So Much Better.” What separates the two is that Franz Ferdinand has the element of sly humor to their songs that Arctic Monkeys lack. There’s something uncomfortable about a retro-sounding band taking themselves too seriously. It’s interesting that in one song there’s a refrain that says, “Get off the bandwagon and put down the handbook,” when this album has stuck so closely to an already popular handbook. Arctic Monkeys want to seem smarter than they actually are.