Arctic Monkeys (Arena, 14 Nov 2009)

If anticipation has a habit to set you up for disappointment in evening entertainment, then the Arctic Monkeys home coming arena gig should have been a tragedy.

Luckily, it wasn't, and as the lights finally dropped to reveal a white lit smokey stage and an older, wiser, hairier version of the Arctic Monkeys swaggered on stage it almost felt biblical. Bursting straight in with Dance Little Liar followed by Brian Storm these local heroes looked confident and seemed genuinely pleased to be back on home turf.

It's clear though, that the Arctic Monkeys have all developed hugely as performers. When they first burst onto the scene they looked like the sort of guys you'd bump into on a night out, now they really look the part. The hair's grown (even Mr Clean Helders was sporting a cheeky afro), they've tweaked and jammed-out a lot of the old stuff and the dark, psychedelic new material shows them for so much more than the cheeky-chappy Northern hit machines they were once renowned as.

One thing that struck me about the performance was how comfortable the boys looked playing the newer stuff and how rigid they looked playing stuff of the first album. Don't get me wrong, all songs were performed impeccably, but it almost felt like they were covering their early material at times.

That said, some of the new stuff did feel a bit lost on the audience and it was the old classics that got the biggest crowd reactions every time.

Towards the end of the set, and after quite a long run of new stuff, Alex chirped into the mic, 'are you still with us everybody?' right before strumming the opening chord for When The Sun Goes Down. As he dropped his vocal out, the audience bellowed the verse back at him before the rest of the band slammed in to finish the song.

As the show drew to an end, confetti exploded from the ceiling and the band walked off stage before returning for the obvious encore, Alex approached the Mic and told us that he didn't want to intrude on our Saturday night plans, but they were going to do a few more.

Playing off to a brilliant rendition of Fluorescent Adolescent, with a dash of Mardy Bum thrown in the middle it really hit home that these Sheffield lads have been living the dream now for three years, and show no signs of stopping soon.