Playlouder schreibt:
Take that precocious kid at school; you know, the one who was always bragging of puking on 20:20, picking girl’s cherries and giving lip to shopkeepers. Give him a clutch of Libertines guitar tab and a Myspace account, Photoshop out (some of) the acne and douse thoroughly in Lynx and voila, you’ve got the Arctic Monkeys. For they ooze with teenage cockiness, their music is stout, brassic and pugnacious, their lyrics are full of „lads squaring up proper shouting“ and talk of birds and booze and run-ins with the law. The trouble is, the much-lauded braggadocio of ‚Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not‘ is hollow.
The Arctic Monkeys have been whirled around in a no-hype-hype doublespeak that’s clearly been exploited to the very hilt in order to get most of the music press and beyond all chattering to the same tune. On the back of this, you’d want (and be right in expecting) ‚Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not‘ to pull no punches from the very first chord.
So the opening ‚A View From The Afternoon‘ is pounding drums and a thuggish guitar roar that sounds like Art Brut’s ‚Formed A Band‘ covered by a rugby team. Its first line – „anticipation has a habit to set you up for disappointment“ – feels prescient, though I doubt that was the intended affect. This is followed by the swift deployment of ‚I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor‘ and ‚Fake Tales Of San Francisco‘. Like the clumsy pawings of the adolescent male it’s too enthusiastic, too soon – and suggests that hitting the listener with those songs so early on was a deliberate attempt to sedate the critical faculties with the warmth of familiarity.
But playing for safety isn’t what this band are supposed to be about and, in any case, familiarity breeds contempt. For ‚Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not‘ goes swiftly downhill, and it’s largely down to this ham-fisted lack of imagination. Example: Does the song that rips off a punk funk beat really need to be called ‚Dancing Shoes‘? Not to mention that it essentially repeats the lyrical theme of ‚I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor‘.
And that’s not all. From the Kaiser Chiefs to Hard-Fi to this lot, small-town drinking and japery is a huge inspiration to the nu-Britpop clan. All very well, but lyrically, this is feeble. The dire ‚Riot Van‘ with its „we got a chase last night from men with truncheons dressed in hats“ is laughable compared with ‚Town Called Malice‘ or most of the output of Jarvis Cocker. There’s simply none of the wit that fellow Sheffield residents Pulp dripped with – the hormonal ‚Still Take You Home‘ and its „I fancy you, you’re a Top Shop princess a rock star too“ is just one example of the lyrical paucity on show – but received wisdom is to praise Alex Turner for his angry young man poetics.
Thirdly, there’s his voice. Sardonic and sneery yes, but lacking the belligerent menace and determined hunger Liam Gallagher gave to ‚Definitely Maybe‘, the album to which this effort will no doubt be favourably compared. It’s not long before his constant lyrical rehashes, delivered by George Formby at the moment his balls dropped, really begin to grate.
There’s a lot less room between, say, Arctic Monkeys, Kaiser Chiefs and Maximo Park than ever there was between Suede, Pulp and Oasis back in the mid-nineties, leading to the inevitable conclusion that fans of Anglocentric guitar music are faced with ever-diminishing returns. And as it was with those boasting boys with the cut-off ties at school, so it is with ‚Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not‘ and The Arctic Monkeys – no-one really wants to run counter to the prevailing orthodoxy and tell the truth that this is merely a half-decent indie pub rock album riding on a whopping cloud of hot air.
und gibt 2/5.
und diese wertung kann ich voll unterstützen. schon die demos überzeugten mich nicht. und zusammen mit dieser radiorock-produktion ist die cd zurecht album des monats bei gmx. für mich klingen die wie eine schülerband, die versucht ihre helden zu kopieren. hier mal ein schönes riff, da mal ne nette idee, aber kaum überzuegende songs. die englischen tokio hotel ist vielleicht etwas zu tiefgegriffen – aber es geht in die richtung. absolut bescheuertes booklet auch.
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