ARCTIC MONKEYS
Suck It and See
Domino
Rating: 
Overhyped British bands have a long history of underdelivering—Gay Dad, anyone?—so the skepticism that greeted Arctic Monkeys in 2006 was warranted: The Sheffield quartet that was artfully scruffy, barely old enough to drink in their own country (and not yet in ours), seemed worthy of a fling, not an invested relationship. But as the buzz quieted, the band got better: Suck, their fourth album, is their strongest by a country kilometer. At the ripe old age of 25, frontman Alex Turner feels like “the Sundance Kid behind a synthesizer,” and spins wry tales of “topless models doing semaphore” and “kungfu fighting on roller skates” over swaggering, Kinks-y backbeats. These young Monkeys were only warming up on their ballyhooed debut five years ago.
