The Arctic Monkeys are three things that propelled the English quartet to sudden super stardom.

First, they are young — really young. No member of the band legally could buy a pint here in the States. The band is relatively adolescent, too. After a couple years resulted in only a handful of shows, the group released a series of singles before its debut LP. It’s this promise — the lure of potential — which created the intrigue.

Secondly, the band holds sway — a lot of sway. On the success of a few Web sites, the lads’ debut became the first non-major label release to top the British charts. The UK press has never been stingy with praise. Notoriously gracious to new acts, the New Musical Express declared “Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I Am Not” the fifth greatest album ever. And readers ate it up.

Whereas U.S. consumers are reluctant to catch onto hype, our European counterparts often buy blindly. How else can you explain the last global Brit-pop explosion, in which Suede’s 1993 record became the fastest selling debut in history? Yet in 1994 Oasis stole that title, and then Elastica did so again in 1995. Consumers in the UK love hype and buy it at a frantic pace, and the Arctic Monkeys deliver to the tune of the new fastest selling debut release in history.

Lastly, the band is good — really good. The 13 tracks follow in the tradition of other great Brit-pop icons of the last two decades. The buzz saw guitars, smarmy vocals and no-bones-about-it rock rings of entitlement. The Arctic Monkeys deserve to be rock stars, or at least, they think so.

The swagger is why it’s easy to ignore this debut is nothing more than a basic guitar album. The four Sheffield natives didn’t re-invent the solo or catchy chorus. But they use these old conventions to near perfection. Which is all the genre’s greats have ever done. They are no different than the countless other bands that relied as much on attitude as innovation.

And there’s nothing wrong playing new music with the same old ideas.