Name game ... Now's your chance to moniker a Monkey
With January set to go down in pop history as the Month of the Monkey, early Feb seems an apt time to tot up what the band in question have achieved in their brief career.
So ... They're a word-of-mouth, internet-sprung phenomenon. There's been some debate about the provenance of their lyrics. They've made UK chart history. They've scored two number-one hits. They've been, um, recognised as the best band in the world, ever, ahead of the Beatles, yada yada. (Beware: that's according to the famously rational NME - which reminds me, whatever happened to the last group to be similarly fawned over by that paper, The Vines?)
Anyway, nobody will disagree that the Sheffield quartet have had a spectacular start to 2006. But a crucial question remains: would you recognise any of them on the dancefloor?
In other words, can anybody tell them apart? Here's a band who have accomplished the feat of becoming the biggest pop stars in the country while staying almost completely anonymous. The bloke on the Clapham omnibus might possibly pick out singer Alex Turner - henceforth known as Alpha Monkey - but the other three are a blur of tracksuits and blushes.
As a unit, even including Turner, they blend into the background, personalities firmly suppressed, like no other top group I can think of. And before anyone mentions Coldplay, bear in mind that they're better thought of as anonymous benefactors who give large donations to charity rather than as a pop band.
Consider Oasis at the same stage of their career: everybody in the country knew not just the Gallaghers but Bonehead, for God's sake. Virtually every other major white guitar-rock band has also been comprised of distinct personalities: the Beatles, Sex Pistols, U2, Stone Roses. But the Arctic Monkeys are defiantly faceless. Much as you might admire their refusal to promote themselves as "celebrities," they're letting the public down. Their explosive, visceral music demands to be complemented by individual stories, so we know exactly who it is we're listening to.
The facelessness is driving the tabloids mad, too. Desperate for dirt on the Monkeys, they've been thwarted by the fact that a scurrilous story on, say, Andy Nicholson would be greeted by a chorus of: "Which one is he?"
So I propose that we help them out, even if we have to be a bit creative. Now's the time to assign the Monkeys personalities. Beefy bass player Nicholson, for instance, is now Bricklayer Monkey. Feel free to post your own.
