NME Awards Tour - Corn Exchange @ Edinburgh

You don't necessarily have to buy into the hype, but on the evidence of a performance which had Edinburgh's Corn Exchange - Scotland's most resolutely soulless venue - jumping, the Arctic Monkeys are no freakish flash in the pan. The newly crowned princes of pop from Sheffield may not have been top of the bill at the NME Awards Tour jamboree - that dubious honour fell to the luckless Maximo Park - but you'll struggle to see anything like the same level of sweaty fervour all year. Mystery Jets and We Are Scientists provided the jerky appetisers for the main course but it was the appearance of Monkeys' main-man Alex Turner strumming the opening chords to When the Sun Goes Down that was the clarion call for mentalness. A couple of number ones and several spiky and spirited - but whisper it, hardly generation-defining - tunes later, they were off, leaving believers and nay-sayers alike astonished in the fug of their irresistible slipstream. (Duncan Forgan)