It's hard to believe that this is a now very nearly a decade old. The second Arctic Monkeys single, and the first that was widely available (only 1,500 copies of Five Minutes with Arctic Monkeys were pressed) went to number one in the UK singles chart (my last number one single bought on vinyl I think) and is surely one of the best pop songs of the '00s. The a-side is, for me at least, a timeless classic and the b-side, Bigger Boys and Stolen Sweethearts is pretty fine too.
Despite living in Sheffield for the last two decades I've never seen Arctic Monkeys live, and I suspect I never will. I vividly remember the buzz in the city when they first started playing live; fellow gig goers and students at school were raving about them long before the album came out, but we were busy adjusting to being a family with the arrival of the first-born, so I never made it to the legendary Leadmill or Grapes gigs. I could probably pick up a ticket the next time they play some bland enormodome locally, but it very much feels like the moment has passed.
It's also easy to forget, in this increasingly post-MP3 age, that they really broke the mould back in 2004, by allowing demo versions of their earliest material to circulate widely and build their reputation. By the time Domino released this in 2005, most of these songs were pretty familiar. As I recall they were one of the first bands to see this as a way of generating huge amounts of interest. Given all this, there's a lovely irony when Turner drawls "Don't believe the hype" at the start of the cracking video. Enjoy!
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