Both jds (Lattitude 44.2 North) and Blackdogred bring a much-needed sense of perspective to the Arctic Monkeys and their seemingly unstoppable hype machine.
jds:
I'm having a hard time understanding the insane buzz surrounding these kids (I believe the lead is 19, thanks Rolling Stone). I like them, but their road to glory is mad redic. For instance, WPSIA,TWIN is the fastest-selling debut in British chart history, with sales of more than 360,000 copies during its first week on the charts (CBS News). And with chart success comes celebrity: two months after the album's release, lead vocalist Alex Turner was declared The Coolest Man On The Planet by NME magazine. Sure, I heard (on NPR of all places) all about how they built buzz for their first release by giving away mp3s, but tell me what "unknown" band isn't doing that? Free mp3s + catchy hooks + "honest lyrics" don't add up to tickets for their upcoming NYC show going for over $150 a piece! Should I mention again that their album was just released in Manhattan yesterday?
I still neither like nor dislike the music enough to advocate anything more than trying it yourself, but I do find it interesting that a band making relatively similar and not distinctively (to me) superior music to a whole passel of bands working the same lineage is generating a press buzz aimed at superstarring the band. Almost every review I've read compares the AMs to the same bands and mentions their Sheffield background, which means that reviewers around the world are hearing some superlative quality in the music of The AMs that elevates their music above those bands to which they're compared, but also means that the fact that the AMs come from an urban-poor economic background somehow more deeply authenticates their sound. My guess, and it's a guess only, is that the latter has more oomph, if for no other reason than it grants weight to the genre as a whole - it's not a bunch of upper-middle class college kids playing at angst and anger.
It's pretty obvious that you can't sell 360,000 copies in a week (in the UK alone, which is pretty incredible when you consider that this week's Billboard #1 sold something like 120,000, in the US) without more PR than simply encouraging file-sharing. The AMs have been hyped for a while: I first heard about them on the BBC late last year, when many celebrities were touting them as "big in 2006."
I've listened to a few mp3s and my reaction was "incredible energy, but it's just good old rock 'n' roll." I don't know all the bands listed in the posts you linked to, but the AMs are far more visceral (and, if what Simon Reynolds has said about them is true, far more plain-spoken) than, say, Franz Ferdinand.
Posted by: mwanji | 23 February 2006 at 04:39 AM
the AMs are far more visceral (and, if what Simon Reynolds has said about them is true, far more plain-spoken) than, say, Franz Ferdinand.
See, that's a band whose popularity and critical acclaim I don't quite get, either, and I'd agree that the Arctic Monkeys are clearly much better than FF.
Posted by: DJA | 23 February 2006 at 05:29 AM
What are you doing up at 5:29 AM ? :-)
Posted by: mwanji | 23 February 2006 at 05:54 AM
Oh, you know, the usual...
Posted by: DJA | 23 February 2006 at 11:50 AM