When confronted with a decent new British band, music journalists are not, by nature, a temperate lot. It is very easy to become besotted with the promise of a heroic future, to manoeuvre a faintly mouthy gang of boys with guitars into some Great Tradition that involves the Beatles, the Jam and the Smiths. After all, there’s always the tiniest chance that the Next Big Thing might actually live up to the rhetoric.

So it is with Sheffield’s Arctic Monkeys. Last year’s Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not was an auspicious if fractionally overpraised start, touted as one of the great British debut albums. There was, though, a worry that the band’s appeal came, in part, from their edgy gaucheness. Surely, after all the acclaim, much of that charm would dissipate?

Happily, Favourite Worst Nightmare proves that the opposite is true. Success does not appear to have gone to the heads of Alex Turner and his three comrades. Instead, it has given them the confidence to flourish.

As a result, the second Arctic Monkeys album is a proper classic. Ambitious, too: the opening single, Brianstorm, is a frenetic tumble of ska, metal and funk that doesn’t waste time on a conventional chorus. If You Were There, Beware mixes belligerent riff and elegiac twang with a complexity that wouldn’t be out of place on a Queens of the Stone Age album.

Fortunately, the band’s melodic gifts are as strong as their experimental urges, and Turner’s vivid ruminations provide a heart to match the virtuosity. A handful of songs — the roistering Teddy Picker, say — feature Turner ruefully grappling with the exigencies of fame. Mostly, though, he writes with a rare precision about being a man in his very early twenties just coming out of his first major love affair. Imagine the Smiths if Morrissey had engaged with the world rather than rejected it, and you’re close to understanding Do me a Favour. “Do me a favour and break my nose,” Turner croons penitently, as the music swells beneath him with a sort of humane grandeur. Favourite Worst Nightmare is full of moments like this. For once, a British band haven’t just fulfilled expectations, they have transcended them.

Editor's choice

• Vote for the Breakthrough Award winner
• David Tennant back as Hamlet after back surgery
• Matt Smith is the new Dr Who