The Cribs - Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever

Genre rock Publisher Warner Brothers/Wichita External Links Official The Cribs Website Official Warner Brothers Website

Well, it was bound to happen. As if there weren't enough proof that the Arctic Monkeys are the voice of today's ASBO-gathering generation (further evidenced by their fans' trashing a cricket pitch with the sheer volume of their urine - but I digress), the inevitable deluge-ette of bands with the same scrappy working-class aesthetic commences. Enter The Cribs, a West Yorkshire trio of brothers who presumably owe their non-world-domination status to their failure to use MySpace to their advantage.

This is not to say that The Cribs lack credibility, however. Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever is their third album, and the band has an extensive back catalogue chock full of catchy, acute pop songs. The album even boasts a production credit from Alex Kapranos, Scotland's preeminent Paul Haig impersonator (Haig himself not withstanding).

You can certainly hear the production budget on Men's Needs..., but The Cribs' it's-grim-up-north outlook still remains in the lyrics and scratchy guitar play. The conversational tone of Gary Jarman's singing voice lends songs like "Girls Like Mystery" an offhand charm. The Jarman brothers' comfort in each others' presence belies the awkwardness with relationships evident in thinking-out-loud songs like the single "Men's Needs". Coupled with the songs' relatively-short length, the lyrics sound like so many big-T Talks begun and frustratingly ended, lending the album an apt tension. "Be Safe," an epic (at nearly six minutes) number, features a spoken-word piece from Lee Ranaldo that manages, despite everything, not to sound pretentious.

In fact, the most pretentious thing about The Cribs is that the thought process is clearly audible in their songs. And even though those songs are a little indistinguishable from one another at times, you can tell the band is thinking about how to take things to the next level. That's the kind of relationship I want to be in.