Feeling the point

My first reaction on hearing Arctic Monkeys was not, as some generous critics have called them, 'The Northern Libertines'. It was, 'at last the neo-wave has its Jilted John!' 'I bet that you look good on the dancefloor' is a piece of fluff, Splodgenessabounds for Chris Moyles listeners. A famous wag once said that humour should be like a knife, you should feel the point as well as see it. With the Sex Pistols, the Smiths or Pulp, the laughs were all the more pleasurable because the barbed words were like a knife to the ribs of well-deserved targets. But with the new generation of bands influenced by the the punk, post-punk and new wave era? Either the pointless laughs of an Arctic Monkeys, or the humourless angst of a Bloc Party (who, for all the anthemic quality of a song such as 'Banquet' left me a little cold at the Halles de Schaarbeek the other night). As my friend Victor S said to me at Moeder Lambic recently, there is so much trouble in the world, so much material for sharp, hip bands, why are the new UK rave (Arctic Monkeys) a group whose message is essentially no different from that of Britney Spears? Why indeed?