Arctic Monkeys Take Rapid Climb in Stride

"We'd all been friends forever, and me and Alex went to the same primary school from about 5 years old on up," Helders says. "Had no idea about drums, just did it as an experiment. When we started, it was just a hobby, we didn't expect anything from it. It was just something different to do rather than hang about out on the street."

The quartet's first performance in 2003 was mostly covers. As an original sound came together, there were varied influences, mostly contemporary (Franz Ferdinand, the Libertines, British hip-hop acts such as the Streets and Roots Manuva), regional (Manchester's Smiths and Oasis) and local (Pulp, with Turner compared to that band's astute lyricist, Jarvis Cocker).

According to Helders, "When we first started, the Strokes were just coming over to England and getting a lot of exposure, and it was bands like that that kind of made us play guitar music."

As songs written by Turner began replacing covers, Arctic Monkeys started giving away the CD-Rs that ended up on the Internet. They were hardly pioneers in viral self-exposure: Bands such as America's Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and England's Libertines had already figured out how to connect with a new generation of fans who had never known music without the Internet.

Says Helders: "We encouraged [fan postings] as much as we could because we never expected to make money off of demos. We didn't have a CD, but people wanted to hear the songs and it made our gigs better. We wouldn't be here now if that hadn't happened to us, so we're definitely thankful about that."

The band took its name from a list of fantasy soccer teams and bands that Cook had made up in school, but the album title comes from Alan Sillitoe's 1958 novel "Saturday Night and Sunday Morning," a key work in the '50s school of British writers dubbed "the angry young men," who wrote about other young men trying to escape their dreary, working-class lives. Last year Domino Records founder Laurence Bell gave them the DVD of the 1960 film version that made a star out of Albert Finney as womanizing factory worker Arthur Seaton.

"When we watched the movie, there was a familiarity to it," Helders says. "I've got the book now -- haven't started reading it yet -- and we got a letter from the author yesterday, saying that he liked the album and he was privileged that we'd used something from his book."

"Saturday Night and Sunday Morning" seems to have shaped the sequencing of songs on the Arctic Monkeys album. It's something of a concept album, following one character's weekend adventures of clubbing, chasing girls and dodging bouncers and police alike.

"It's not like we're trying to tell people about their own lives," Helders says. "We're just singing about what we've experienced, which in turn are things that a lot of people have experienced. I think that's why they can relate to it."

How all this will play in America is open to question, particularly since Turner makes no accommodation for his thick Yorkshire accent and lyrical slang. So far, both American media attention and label exploitation have been minimal, though the band did manage to score a slot on "Saturday Night Live" on March 11. Their album, released here Feb. 21, debuted at No. 24 with 34,000 copies sold, less than one-tenth of its first-week numbers at home. At the South by Southwest music conference in Austin last week, Arctic Monkeys was one of the hardest-to-get tickets, and they were Topic A on the panel "Breaking British Buzz Bands."

Clearly, buzz works: Arctic Monkeys' first full-fledged American tour sold out in minutes.

Says Helders: "It's more of a boost in confidence, knowing that people want to come and see us, unless they come and see us and decide they don't like us. It's something we're enjoying more than anything, not feeling any pressure. We're just taking it as it comes."

Arctic Monkeys Appearing Monday at the 9:30 club with Spinto Band Sounds Like: A little bit punk, a little bit funk, a lot of brash pop, all refracted through Alex Turner's working-class sensibilities.