Thursday, February 23, 2006

The Arctic Monkeys...I'm Totally Serious

Have you heard of the Arctic Monkeys? Your response: If your from the US, probably not. If your from the UK, who hasn't.

Exactly a month ago The Actic Monkeys released"Whatever People Say I am, That's What I'm Not," their first indie album in the UK. This became the fast selling debut-album in UK history (outselling the rest of the top 20 combined). (see BBC article, January 29 2006)

How'd they do that? Well, I first heard this story on NPR's program "All Things Considered" (that NPR story can be heard here, February 22 2006). They give credit to their grass roots efforts, namely handing out demo CDs when they performed...as a result, people put this music online. (Myspace anyone??)

I think that the song "I Bet You Look Good on the Dance Floor" is a lot of fun. You can listen to it online at their site and a bazillion other places online.

The CD was just released in the US and who knows how successful they'll be here...they definitly have a strong British sound with a lot of slang and themes of working class Britian (I can't help but think of movies like the Full Monty were I have to use subtitles).

The NPR story pulls out some lines from their song "A Certain Romance" that I think are really funny ("Over there there's broken bones/ There's only music, so that there's new ringtones/ And it doesn’t take no Sherlock Holmes/ To see it's a little different around here").

And today was the NME awards where once again The Arctic Monkeys made history as they are the first band ever to win the Best New Band award and then go on to win Best British Band award. (The song "I bet you look Good on the Dance Floor" also won the award for "best track") (from Reuters article).

Congrats to The Arctic Monkey...let's see how they do on this side of the pond.

(I highly recommend you listen to the NPR story it gives you a good taste of their sound)

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey!! thanks for the shout out on my LiveJournal a while back! I just now saw that you posted!

Lexi <><

James Goodman said...

Yes, they are a fun band. i heard them on "Left of Center" a sattelite radio station in January and I couldn't wait for the CD to be released.

Thanks for stopping by earlier...

Sher said...

I have heard of the Artic Monkeys!

Dustin said...

i have heard of these guys and read quite a bit about them but have not given them a listen yet. But you've peeked my curiosity!

Will said...

i am always skeptical of hype, but I really do like these guys and their catchy dance floor garage singles. As far as how it will translate to success in the US, their SF show sold out way before the album hit stores.

Strawman said...

And it was only a year ago that Bloc Party were our darlings. Arctic Monkeys aren't bad, but this whole circle-jerk of indie buzzband of the minute has become a little tedious. I bought the Nano only to have to buy the Ipod video only to have to prepare to buy Mircosoft's lates revolutionary gadget. I'm fatigued. Otherwise, nice blog.