^[1]
Forget the “Four Stages of Arctic Monkeys” [bwe ^[2]] when assessing your devotion to the latest heroes of dance rock. The more relevant questions for you are: (1) how long ago did I buy tickets to Wednesday’s sold-out show at the Crocodile? and (2) How much am I willing to spend to remedy my ticketless situation? Zoologists might also ponder: (3) Do any non-human primates have a natural geographic distribution stretching north of the Arctic circle? But they’re a funny lot; so the rest of you can focus on questions 1 and 2 for now, saving number 3 for extra credit.

Yes, Arctic Monkeys ^[3] are coming to town. While your MySpace profile only gets you the occasional spam from internet camgirls and fledgling ska bands; theirs [# ^[4]] helped them sell out shows before they’d released a full length. And Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not [$ ^[5]] dropped in January, it became the fastest selling album in the U.K.

I saw the band last month in Amsterdam, along with a fair share of channel-crossing fanatics who did their best to, er, look good on the dance floor along with hordes of tall Dutch enthusiasts. Their show was one of the most fun concerts I’ve been to all year — and this is after coming home with a swollen lip and standing in the rain for hours to score a ticket. Those wondering what sort of dancing to expect can recall the friendly neighborhood mosh pit and turn it down a few levels of agro and will have a good idea. One thing that becomes clear from their live show is why many of the songs on their compulsively listenable album have these odd moments where things slow down a bit. When you’re listening to these on your iPod, you might find these odd. When you’re caught in a sea of sweaty dancing fans, these breath catching moments make perfect sense.

If you can’t bring yourself to pay something like ten times the face value to get a ticket on eBay and don’t feel up to moping around outside the Crocodile in the hopes that some incredibly nice people have a spare ticket, you still have options. Console yourself by watching them on SNL [prefixblog ^[6]]. Stay at home, have a dance party in your pajamas. Buy a ticket to see them at Sasquatch [hob ^[7]]. And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, try not to get turned off by the hype. Buy or borrow the album and have a listen. It’s incredibly catchy, it’s dance rock, and most of the lyrics are complete sentences that shape up to song-length stories. And all of this adds up to something pretty great.

—Arctic Monkeys play at the Crocodile ^[8], 29 march; doors are at 8:30. // They’re back on Sunday 28 may at the Gorge in George, WA along with about a hundred of your favorite bands.