Breathless, hyperbolic praise was piled upon the Arctic Monkeys and their debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, an instant phenomenon without peer. Within the course of a year, the band rose from the ranks of an Internet phenomenon to the biggest band in the U.K., all on the strength of early demos circulated on the web as MP3s. Those demos built the band a rabid fan base before the Monkeys had released a record, even before they played more than a handful of gigs. In effect, the group performed a complete run around the industry, avoiding conventional routes toward stardom, which paid off in spades. When Whatever People Say I Am hit the streets in January 2006, it sold a gob-smacking 118,501 copies within its first week of release, which not only made it the fastest-selling U.K. debut ever, but sold more than the rest of the Top 20 combined - a remarkable achievement by any measure.
Whatever People Say I Am captures the band mashing up the Strokes and the Libertines at will, jamming too many angular riffs into too short a space, tearing through the songs as quickly as possible. But where the Strokes camouflaged their songwriting skills with a laconic, take-it-or-leave-it sexiness, and where the Libertines mythologized England with a junkie poeticism, the Arctic Monkeys at their heart are simple, everyday lads, lacking any sense of sex appeal or romanticism, or even the desire for either. Nor do they harbor much menace, either in their tightly wound music or in how Turner spits out his words. Also, the dry production, sounding for all the world like an homage to Is This It - all clanking guitars and clattering drums, with most of the energy coming from the group's sloppy call-and-response backing vocals - keeps things ever immediate. In a way, Whatever People Say I Am is an ideal album for the age of Information Overload: nearly every track here is stuffed with riffs and words, and just when it's about to sort itself out, it stops short. Instead of relying on a digital cut-and-paste clamor, lead singer and lyricist Alex Turner is a natural storyteller, chronicling a very specific time and place. Like Weller or Ian Dury before him, he's captured his era in stark, vivid terms; he may not transcend his time, but he embodies it fully.
- Stephen Thomas Erlewine - allmusic.com
