British punk rockers miss the high note

It's easy to pigeonhole a band like Arctic Monkeys. You could start with their name: it may be a play on "northern monkeys," but it sounds like the name of a band of 14-year-olds covering Eve 6. You could also criticize their terrible album name, or maybe the fact that they're another so-called "post-punk" band that Britain's New Musical Express is gushing about.\nWhen Whatever People Say I Am... gets released on Feb. 21 in the U.S. It may explode like Franz Ferdinand's debut or simply sputter out. like so many other NME-hyped UK bands. North-of-England slang and horrific accents may not translate into American popularity.\nThe truth of the matter is that they're a bunch of 20-year-olds that have managed to write a debut album that sounds like Bloc Party, without the smirking or the Libertines without crack. That's not to say that it's amazing or that, to quote the New York Times, "you probably won't hear a better CD all year long" (it's February for Christ's sake).\nHowever, this album does feature some ear-catching, head-turning moments and of all the British No-Wave and Garage albums that have been described in superlatives since 2001, this is one of the better ones. It's also not much different than the rest of them.\nThe opener "The View from the Afternoon" starts out like a bland, over-compressed basement rock number, before exploding into off-kilter guitar skipping. It then ends abruptly only to start again; the angular guitars and Bloc Party-esque virtuoso drumming cutting in by surprise. It's jarring, but not bad.\nThe next two songs are better. "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor," their recent UK #1 single, has enough energy to compensate for its run-of-the-mill melody. "Fake Tales of San Francisco" starts out pretty annoying and then explodes into face-first rock with an excellent harmony and bass line. It sounds like one of the two good songs on the newest Strokes record.\nThe remainder hovers between decent and impressive. "Still Take You Home" manages to bring its incoherent chord progression together at the end and sound like a Pixies song. \nIf this is an era-defining album for English youth, I guess England is a pretty dreary place to be these days. Like most All-American listeners, I can't identify with it.