Gig review: Arctic Monkeys

This is the first in an occasional series where I will review the gigs we go to. Really I should have started with Badly Drawn Boy a few weeks ago, but I didn't and now I can't really remember what happened. This is mostly for my benefit to record what we've seen, but feel free to read my ramblings if you're interested.

We went to see Arctic Monkeys at the Warfield on Tuesday. The Warfield is a delightful ex-theatre which looks like it must have been built just after the big earthquake a century ago. It has a plushly decorated interior and a large balcony with seats (who wants to sit through a gig??) We were more sensibly located in the stalls area, where the seats had been removed in favour of a mosh pit.

I admit this won't be an impartial review. I love Arctic Monkeys. Not just for their music, which in my opinion is first-rate, but moreover because they hail from Sheffield and really do trade on their heritage heavily in their songs, which are sung with a thick accent and peppered with regional slang and place names. Listening to them is a brief trip home for me, like going back to the schoolyard.

The support band were Be Your Own Pet. I had vaguely heard of them before. They were a bit too much for me. The singer was a blonde with a Cousin It hairdo who rambled incoherently and threw occasional epileptic fits on the floor. The lead guitarist had a talent for being able to play riffs whilst doing backwards tumbles across the stage. We saw them thrash through a few songs (we arrived late) and they were soon off the stage.

Then came Arctic Monkeys. My God, they're so young! By now the Warfield was packed. They are really quite popular over here, and get lots of airplay on alternative radio stations. This was the first gig of their US tour.

Their set was a mixture of crowd-pleasers from the first album and new material from their just-released second album (Favourite Worst Nightmare) which I mostly hadn't heard before. I liked the new stuff - it's heavier and more energetic on average, but with characteristically good riffs and rhythm.

The band concentrated on the music rather than the show, and although their musicianship was excellent, it felt like a rendition of well-rehearsed album versions - they didn't put a new spin on any of the tracks. I would have liked a bit more audience interaction than we got. The singer (Alex Turner) has plenty of Northern charm and the crowd loved it every time he spoke to them - even when he subtly took the mick out of the people in the balcony for sitting down. So more of that please... I had expected that the gig would erupt when they did Fake Tales of San Francisco, but they didn't really milk it enough. Surprisingly, people got a lot more excited when they did When the Sun Goes Down, which has clearly been a huge success over here, as the entire crowd were singing along in faux South Yorkshire accents (which made me smile widely).

It was a bit disappointing when, at the end of the set, the management turned on all the lights, opened the doors and switched on loud Tina Turner music. A bit of a jolt, that. No chance of an encore then? The set seemed short, but the lads did a very professional job belting out track after track without missing a beat, note-perfect. I enjoyed it.