Arctic Monkeys All Business Onstage

In Britain, where Arctic Monkeys' "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not" is the fastest-selling debut album ever, breathless pop pundits have hailed the Sheffield quartet as bigger or better than another cocky young band from the north of England, the Beatles. But there's a lot more "Anarchy in the U.K." than "All You Need Is Love" in the Monkeys' sound and stance, as the group demonstrated Monday night at a sold-out 9:30 club, playing a brash 50-minute set. No encores, no apologies and -- as one song vowed -- "no surrender."

After a false start that could have been an actual mistake or just a strategic tease, the Monkeys blared into "The View From the Afternoon," the same number that opens their album. The song is characteristic: a ruefully wordy account of a bad night out -- "Anticipation has the habit to set you up/For disappointment in evening entertainment but," barked frontman Alex Turner -- rendered with near-rhymes, dry funk rhythms and guitars that alternately churned and sparked.

The band shifted hastily but confidently between conversational lyrics and instrumental outbursts, yielding music that was as bristling as Class of '77 punk, but considerably more open-ended. Indeed, one of the Monkeys' defining gambits is the tune that seems to end, only to burst forth again, as if its excess of emotion can't be contained by conventional song structure. Dub reggae's sense of space is clearly an influence on the group's style, even if the Monkeys' timbres -- thin vocals and high-pitched guitars -- are those of punk and, for that matter, folk.

Musically, the Monkeys stayed close to the script, demonstrating just how carefully constructed their edge-of-chaos sound really is. The principal revelation came from observing the interplay between Turner and fellow guitarist Jamie Cook, whose mutual style seems derived primarily from the Buzzcocks' hyper-strum and Television's contrapuntal clangs. Although he played less than Cook, Turner turned out to be the band's closest equivalent to a lead guitarist.

Like many bands touring their first album, the Monkeys played most of it, although they did supplement their better-known material with "Leaving Before the Lights Come On," a song that's as yet unreleased (yet well documented on fan Web sites). The crowd that pressed closest to the stage could be heard chanting along with Turner whenever the instruments didn't overwhelm them. This singalong was the principal interaction between the group and its listeners.

As is typical of British rockers with an attitude and a reputation, the Monkeys were not chatty onstage. But then Turner's South Yorkshire accent was too heavy for major conversation.

That may be telling, since the unanswered question about Turner and company is whether they have anything left to say. Impetuous as it sounds, the band's debut is artful, calculated and potentially definitive. Nothing the musicians did at the 9:30 club suggested that they have anything ready for their second act. But if the Monkeys do hit on another idea, they clearly have the savvy to execute it.