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"I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor," from "Who the Fuck Are Arctic Monkeys?"

They’re currently the biggest band in Britain and the clever little bastards deserve to be. All barely in their twenties, the members of this Sheffield quartet picked up instruments, started the band and within a couple years already have a debut album that has instantly become a generational touchstone for Blighty’s lads and girls with a refreshingly back-to-the-basics approach and unique take on tired old, guitar-based rock and roll. Nicking just enough of The Jam’s unbridled power and “everyday England” storytelling as well as big choruses, reverb and conversational style from The Smiths, the Monkeys add a touch of reggae skank and defiantly wonderful pop song structure to capture the zeitgeist. Vocalist/guitarist Alex Turner is like a streetwise prophet in his zip-up Adidas jacket and pint of lager spitting truisms like “there’s only music so that there's new ringtones.” Arctic Monkeys still have yet to make even an Oasis-sized crack Stateside and their debut Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not only washed up on US shores two months ago. The ep Who The Fuck Are Arctic Monkeys? was recently issued in England, though, both as a signpost of a band bursting with music and of a label willing to satiate listeners hungry for more. It’s odd that plinked down among these five tracks is the opening track from Whatever People Say, the rushing, jagged tour de force “View From The Afternoon,” and it is the only questionable move here. “Cigarette Smoker Fiona” is a blistering stomper that changes pace throughout, as the Monkeys are prone to do. “No Buses” is tempered and blue-hued, with Turner pining about romantic tangles. The title track is a myth-debunking song showing venom toward new found celebrity and self-loathing which shouldn’t be coming off a band so young, but it works. America at large may never know who the fuck Arctic Monkeys are, but if we don’t, it’s our loss.