Arctic Monkeys
Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

THE REVIEW

It seems absolutely absurd to me that this is the debut of the Artic Monkeys, since I've been listening to them for quite some time now, and they've been talked about as the greatest English band since the Oasis long before I started listening to them; these could be the first real signs of the future of the music industry: the Monkeys were already famous without having released a damn thing, simply through p2p networks and websites, enough to instill in me (and quite a few of my friends) the belief that they had already released an excellent debut, called Artic Monkeys, of sixteen tracks… which is nothing more than the rar archive circulating on emule long before the debut of these rascals.
Besides the negligible beliefs of a group of junkies, there’s also an NME cover (not just pizza and figs, the most important English music magazine) well before the release of this album. And here enters a problem: the English press (and not only…): Travis, Coldplay, Libertines, Strokes, Darkness, Franz Ferdinand, Babyshambles and now Artic Monkeys… they talk about nothing but their business, how they are destined to ascend to the music Olympus, about Gwyneth “Broomstick” Paltrow, Kate and Pete, the new Sid and Nancy, Casablancas’ clothes… overloaded with attention for people who need a bit of healthy damn hard work to not burn out. And on the other side, there’s an excess of neglect for the musical side, often extremely relevant…

Back to the damn Monkeys: great. I realized one night when I was completely wasted, sprawled on the back seat of a friend's new Panda (more like a friend of a friend, maybe), while the speakers pissed out the usual pathetic pop-labeled-rock groups like the Backstreet 182, Cranberries (strictly “Zombie”), Guano Apes (monkey shit, in every sense), the dazzling sparkle of “I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor” woke me from my THC dreams, making me slur “Well... who the hell are they? Damn, I have to download them…”.
Needless to say, my recollection of all this is strictly mediated, since the entire evening is lost in the dark recesses of my mind and, as often happens, it was reconstructed by a team of friends, whom I ask what I did during the evening (just to know who I need to defend myself from and whose girl I might have hit on).

Back to the damn Monkeys: world-class. I hope the Monkeys saga isn’t a one-off and that we proceed to a slow (but not too slow) screwing of the record companies. Screw the damn pigs. All Hail The Free Stuff!!!!