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BEAT STREET

Arctic Monkeys: Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not

EMI Music, CD, Rs. 350

"Anticipation has a habit to set you up/ For disappointment," sings Arctic Monkey's Alex Turner. As you go through the rest of the album, you release that you should have picked up on that premonition, delivered to you on a silver platter. After all, look up the Arctic Monkeys, and you'll hear news of how their album, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, made history by becoming the fastest selling debut album on the U.K. charts. And yet, like so much of Britpop nowadays, you really have to ask what all the fuss is about.

It's not like they're the worst punk band you can find on the charts nowadays. On the contrary, they're easily one of the better acts out there. They've got a great sound, as stripped down and gritty as you'd like after years of listening to wishy-washy bands like Coldplay. And piggybacked on that is a nice set of vocals and fairly quirky lyrics. Switch on this album and you'll invariably find yourself air-drumming to it. This album is as catchy as it has got in a while.

However, that's pretty much where it ends. Whatever People Say... is catchy, but wholly unremarkable. Going halfway through the album, you realise that it lacks imagination. After a while, all the songs tend to meld together in your head. The powerhouse beginning that "The view from the afternoon", "I bet you look good on the dance floor" and "Fake tales of San Francisco" gives way to an album that settles into a nice, familiar groove and bleeds it dry. And the quirky, observational humour that you found attractive in the first few songs starts to feel artificial, lacking as it does the ability to make any observations of philosophical weight. Admittedly, punk is music for and about the regular Joe, but listening to Arctic Monkeys reminds you just how boring the lives of some of the regular Joes are.

At the end of it all, what you have is a decent punk, pub rock album. Nothing more nothing less.

The Shapeshifters: Sound Advice

Virgin Records (India), CD, Rs. 395

So you have it, another dance music duo that was supposed to change the scene forever. Or, at least, that's how The Shapeshifters were billed when they first burst onto the dance music scene with their now-iconic single "Lola's Theme". It didn't hurt when "Back to Basics" and "Incredible" tasted similar success. So the obvious next step was a full-fledged album.

However, as is often the case, one, two or even three hit singles can't sell an entire album. While The Shapeshifters exhibit occasionally strong talent in this CD, the end result is more a letdown than anything else.

The primary problem with the album is its lack of direction. While "Lola's Theme" and "Back to Basics" are easy winners, with enough examples of why Simon Marlin and Max Reich are at the enviable place they recently occupied, the rest of the album smacks of lethargy or complacence. The maturity in writing that brought them their big hits is curiously absent in many of the smaller songs. Almost throughout the album, Marlin and Reich fail to push the envelope in the genre. Song after song feels like a by-the-book creation, and one can predict every drumbeat and chord two bars before it comes. The slow-tempo numbers such as "You Never Know" and "Over Me" are quite boring, while the faster songs reek of confusion.

Still, dance music isn't about being profoundly different. It's about what feels familiar enough to drop your inhibitions. And Sound Advice does that for the most part. The vocals are clean, the production slick and the songs mostly danceable.

The Shapeshifters' Sound Advice might not stand up to the careful scrutiny of a reviewer, but it can surely get a crowd on its feet.

RAKESH MEHAR

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