ARCTIC MONKEYS - Favourite Worst Nightmare Review

When confronted with a decent new British band, music journalists are not, by nature, a temperate lot. It is very easy to become besotted with the promise of a heroic future, to manoeuvre a faintly mouthy gang of boys with guitars into some Great Tradition that involves the Beatles, the Jam and the Smiths. After all, there’s always the tiniest chance that the Next Big Thing might actually live up to the rhetoric....full text Could this be the death knell of the sub-genre? Could The Arctic Monkeys single-handedly destroy our obsessions with new catch-phrases, the freshest microscopic musical niche and novelty new sounds? With a couple decades of music press and fans obsessing over terminology and coining catch-phrases almost as fast as bands write songs, it's probably a tough job. Luckily, with a sophomore effort under its belt, the British rockers come armed to the teeth....full text It's second album time for the Class of 2005, and already The Rakes, Bloc Party and Maxïmo Park have produced their sophomore efforts with rather mixed results so far. Now it's time for arguably the most eagerly awaited album of the year, as the most famous foursome from Sheffield set out to prove they're not just a flash in the pan....full text