"Fake tales of the New Libertines." For those of you unfamiliar with the lyric upon which I have just made an incredibly weak pun, allow me to explain.
Sheffield's Arctic Monkeys are A Bone Fide Big Deal, Dickensian post-Doherty street urchins with one eye on the Streets' beery nu-ladism racket and the other on the Kaiser Chiefs' revisionist Britpop dollar.
The song I refer to - Fake Tales Of San Francisco - is a withering broadside directed at Strokes-aping posers. The irony is that nobody has wanted to be the New Strokes since 2003.
Two years later, everybody wants to be the New Libertines, including these guys. Barat and Co reinvented the glamorous indie rock game, and in the wake of their implosion it is left to the Monkeys and support band Cardboard Radio to play by their revised rules. It's Pete Doherty's world, we just live in it. The Arctic Monkeys set consisted of three genuinely excellent pop songs and a bunch of filler. This is fine. Most bands are content with filler. The blokeish crowd is slavishly devotional, and slavishly devotional blokes are hard to argue with.
Meanwhile, York's own Cardboard Radio are busy being utterly brilliant. Early Led Zep, music hall, the Kinks, and a dash of nu-skool glamorous indie rock and roll.
Cardboard Radio are simply a great British R'n'B band, smart and tight and groovy like a band of this type should be. They might just be The New Arctic Monkeys.
Updated: 11:05 Thursday, July 28, 2005
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