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The profile · researched 4 November 2026
The Wolverhampton band who played an Arctic Monkeys song before Arctic Monkeys did
Antarctic Monkeys have spent twenty years inside someone else's songbook, and in January 2026 they got there first — giving "Opening Night" its live debut months before the band who recorded it. Their twentieth year ends with an anniversary show in Lincoln and a diary that runs to the summer of 2027.
From The Ryde to a rehearsal-room accident
The four-piece did not set out to make a career of another band's records. They came together in Wolverhampton in 2001, first as The Ryde and then as The Empires, writing and playing their own material around the West Midlands. The turn came in 2006, shortly after Arctic Monkeys' debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not arrived: singer Dean Reynolds ran an acoustic version of "I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor" at rehearsal, and what came back from the room was different from anything their own songs had drawn.
Speaking in 2026, Reynolds was blunt about the motive. "That wasn't the plan at all," he said. "We were an originals band for a few years but always looking at ways to play our music for larger crowds." In a 2018 interview he put the same thing more plainly still — they were "doing original stuff and looking for a way to support that, and to play to bigger crowds." The band learned the debut album inside a month. Their second or third gig as a tribute act was at the Glastonbudget festival, and by the end of the first week they could see the shape of it. The original material was quietly dropped.
Twenty years on, the line-up is still built around Reynolds, who sings and plays guitar and also handles the band's management, and guitarist Ian Fletcher. The job title Reynolds uses for himself is "being Alex".
A set that still leans on 2006
The repertoire now covers seven Arctic Monkeys studio albums — the debut, Favourite Worst Nightmare, Humbug, Suck It And See, AM, Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino and The Car — along with the early Who The F*** Are Arctic Monkeys EP. The weighting is nothing like even. Roughly half of a given night comes from the 2005–06 debut, and the band have said so openly rather than pretending to an even spread across the catalogue.
That imbalance is partly a problem they inherited. When Tranquility Base Hotel & Casino came out in 2018, Antarctic Monkeys took exactly one song from it into the set, "Four Out Of Five", and needed backing tracks to carry the arrangement. "It's quite difficult," Reynolds said of the era. Audience reaction to the newer material, he added, was "hit and miss", and the arithmetic of replacing anything was unforgiving: "The trouble is that the current setlist is so good that I don't know what we'd drop."
The visual side is handled with the same literalism. For years the band worked an AM-era look of quiffs and 1950s suiting, and Reynolds planned a shift to pale pastels and clear sunglasses to follow the 2018 record. Fletcher has described the detail work as the point rather than a flourish: "We do try and get every little detail right. Whether it be wearing the same tops, or even things like the photograph on my amplifier." He is also clear about what two decades of repetition does to borrowed songs — "It now feels like it's our own because of how long we have played it for."
First to play "Opening Night"
The band's most newsworthy moment came on 31 January 2026 at the O2 Academy in Leeds, where they gave the live debut of "Opening Night" — the first new Arctic Monkeys recording in some time, cut at Abbey Road with producer Loren Humphrey as the lead single from the War Child charity album Help(2), released on 6 March 2026. Arctic Monkeys were not on the road, and a tribute act in Leeds beat them to the stage with their own song.
Reynolds knew what he had. "It feels pretty special to be the first band to play the track live," he said in early February 2026. "Obviously Arctic Monkeys came together to record it for a great cause with War Child and the 'Help(2)' album, however I think it could be some time before they take to the stage with it." His account of the room was unromantic: the crowd held back through the verses and then sang the chorus, and the reaction online afterwards was warm.
Setlist records from that Leeds night show an eleven-song logged set built from the familiar spine — "The View From the Afternoon", "Fluorescent Adolescent", "Dancing Shoes", "Snap Out of It", "Do I Wanna Know?", "Pretty Visitors", "Arabella", "Teddy Picker", "Crying Lightning" — with "Opening Night" and "No. 1 Party Anthem" both played for the first time. The band went on to Bournemouth's O2 Academy on 7 February 2026.
Twenty years, two laps of Australia
2026 marks the band's twentieth year as a tribute act, and the date they have hung the anniversary on is Saturday 21 November 2026 at The Drill in Lincoln. It sits inside a run that mixes the O2 Academy circuit with independent rooms: Eleven in Stoke-on-Trent on 6 November, two nights at O2 Academy Islington on 13 and 14 November, O2 Academy Liverpool on 28 November, The Welly in Hull on 4 December, KuBar in Stockton-on-Tees on 5 December and The Nest in Nottingham on 11 December. The 2027 diary already carries O2 Academy Glasgow on 8 January, O2 City Hall Newcastle on 9 January, O2 Academy Leeds on 30 January, O2 Academy Bournemouth on 6 February and the O2 Ritz in Manchester on 3 July, with further shows listed in Southampton, Northampton, York, Barnsley, Grimsby, Wolverhampton, Sheffield and Gloucester through to 13 August 2027 — nineteen concerts on sale in all. One of the autumn dates, Casino Rooms in Rochester on 2 October 2026, was a rescheduled show moved from 21 February.
The overseas touring is real rather than decorative. They played Sydney's Metro Theatre on 26 July 2025 and went back for a full Australian run a year later: Freo.Social in Fremantle on 24 July 2026, The Governor Hindmarsh in Adelaide on 25 July, The Triffid in Brisbane on 30 July, 170 Russell in Melbourne on 31 July and the Metro again on 1 August. The promoter's listings record every date as completed, with several sold out in advance.
Beyond that the band have worked Ireland, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, Dubai, Sicily, New Zealand and the United States, and have festival bookings behind them including Oxegen in 2010 and Liverpool's Mathew Street Festival, which they played to a reported crowd of 50,000.
Who turns up, and what they get
The audience splits geographically in a way Reynolds has been candid about: northern rooms give him mosh pits, while southern crowds are "a little bit tamer". The shows are licensed-venue gigs rather than family events in most cases — Rochester, for instance, runs at 14-plus with under-18s supervised, while the Australian dates in Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney were all-ages.
What comes back from ticket-buyers is consistent to the point of repetition, and it is always about proximity rather than interpretation: "Just like the real deal absolutely no difference… you'll not be let down, brilliant night!"; "Best gig I've been to for a while, it was like being at the actual thing"; "Singer has all the moves and voice of Alex Turner". A five-star notice carried on the band's own site runs along the same line — "this band are epic and so good they almost could be the Arctic Monkeys" — and credits the playing rather than the resemblance alone.
That is the market they operate in. Arctic Monkeys have been off the road, the debut album turned twenty in January 2026, and a band who learned it in a month in 2006 are now the most reliable way to hear it played loud in a 800-to-1,500-capacity room.
The show, now
A current show is a straight headline set with no support act listed at most dates, running about two hours inside a 7pm-to-10.30pm window at club venues and a 7pm doors, 11pm curfew at the O2 Academies; Rochester on 2 October 2026 and Sydney on 1 August 2026 both ran to 22 songs, opening with "The View From the Afternoon" and closing on "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor". The shape is front-loaded with the debut album and AM, with "Fluorescent Adolescent", "Dancing Shoes", "Snap Out of It", "Do I Wanna Know?", "Arabella", "Teddy Picker", "Pretty Visitors" and "Crying Lightning" early, a slower middle around "Cornerstone", "Mardy Bum" and "505", and "R U Mine?" late; "Opening Night" has been in the set since its live debut in Leeds on 31 January 2026. Staging is deliberately plain — four players, no screens or props in evidence, with the detail spent instead on matching clothing and small replicated touches such as the photograph taped to the guitarist's amplifier, and backing tracks used where the later arrangements demand them. Reynolds has said northern rooms give him mosh pits and southern ones are tamer, and that newer material still lands unevenly. Fan verdicts turn on how close it gets: "like being at the actual thing", "10/10 would book more tickets in a heart beat". Most UK dates are 14-plus with under-18s supervised; the Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney shows were all-ages.
Researched from antarcticmonkeys.com · antarcticmonkeys.com · nme.com · nme.com · lsjnews.co.uk · livenation.co.uk · totaltouring.com.au · setlist.fm