The University News

Issue date: 9/17/07 Section: Culture

Media Credit: Jordan Kerfeld

When The Arctic Monkeys released "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not" in 2006, the teenage quartet was immediately slotted as the hottest rock band in the world. These kinds of things happen when your band shatters a Beatles-held sales record in the U.K.

Thursday night, Kansas Citians saw first-hand how quickly glory fades.

An unimpressive crowd filed into the Uptown Theater to catch a glimpse of our neighbors to the east. The crowd was enthusiastic and lively for most of the night, but the Uptown didn't quite have the capacity-crowd rumble that country-mates Bloc Party enjoyed at their concert over the summer. The balcony was closed and there was a lot of empty space in the lower level.

The evening began with Austin-based Voxtrot, a dance-y new wave band that warmed up the crowd with an entree of about eight angst-ridden romance songs. The opening act originally slated for the show was The Coral, a neo-psychadelic UK rock band that is beginning to catch critical and sales fire with its stellar new album "Roots & Echoes."

In 1964, after performing in a double bill with the Kinks - and noticing the opening Kinks act clearly won the crowd - Beatle John Lennon vowed the two groups would never perform together again.

This might explain why The Coral did not perform with the Monkeys; this theory was magnified by the Monkeys' painfully mediocre performance.

Don't get me wrong, they played an even-handed collection of songs from their debut album and from Spring 2007's "Favourite Worst Nightmare." Another interesting aspect was they would play two-minute instrumental jams sometimes between songs to keep things interesting.

However, their concert performance sounded exactly like the albums. They played loud, furious and fast, but there was no charisma; singer Alex Turner's bleary eyes swam lifelessly across the room as his group played a paint-by-numbers set.

While they played songs very faithfully to their albums, they sped up their songs considerably. Like pulling off a Band-Aid, it looked like they wanted to just get it over with so they could hop on a bus and get out of the city.

Between songs they had sleepy conversations away from microphones, and did very little to acknowledge their fans in the crowd. They did not even try to feign gratitude to the countless teenagers who paid more than $20 and were dropped off by their parents, invoking the adolescent scorn of their peers.

There's not much to say after Thursday's show other than this: stick to the albums; you won't miss much in person.

jkerfeld@unews.com

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