AUSTIN, Texas--The exceedingly hyped Arctic Monkeys stormed into the South by Southwest this week with more buzz than any of the 1,400 bands playing here.

At their showcase performance at La Zona Rosa Friday night, the youngsters from Sheffield showed they were worthy of it, displaying the chops of a seasoned outfit, tearing through tracks from their debut album, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not.

But they also exhibited something that was considerably more impressive: clarity.

In an era when the Next Big Thing morphs into Distant Memory in a flash, this quartet of publicity-shy boy-next-door types seems to understand that buzz alone won't help them turn short-term stardom into long-term stability.

"We're the hot new young band," 19-year-old front man Alex Turner said sarcastically, one of a number of tongue-in-cheek comments he made in reference to the hype surrounding them.

He also didn't hide his disdain for the ever-increasing size of the venues the band has been playing after making their mark with blistering live shows in tiny Sheffield-area pubs in 2004 and 2005: "This is everything a gig should not be."

But it wasn't all barbs at their meteoric rise--Everything They Say I Am on the UK indie label Domino Records was the fastest-selling debut in UK chart history, selling a staggering 360,000 copies in its first week. The band rocked the house, giving those lucky enough to get into the packed show a taste of those beer-soaked pub shows that fed the hype machine last year.

The Monkeys strode on stage to the G-funk sounds of Warren G's 1995 hit "Regulate" and quickly ripped into the rambunctious "I Bet That You Look Good on the Dancefloor," their first single, and "When the Sun Goes Down," their wistful take on prostitution and late-night seediness.

The witty Turner is at his lyrical best when he sardonically surveys the scene around him, such as on the sublime "A Certain Romance": "There's the truth that they can't see/they'd probably like to throw a punch at me/and if you could only see them then you would agree/agree that there ain't no romance around here."

Turner's lyrics seem as equally informed by the geezer-centric raps of The Streets as any of the post-punk bands to whom they're most often compared, like The Libertines.

On "A Certain Romance," he makes a Mike Skinner-esque apology for his mates: "Over there are some friends of mine/what can I say, I've known 'em for a long, long time/sometimes they overstep the line/but you just can't get angry in the same way."

The crisp set also included the ska-influenced rhythms of "Mardy Bum" and "Fake Tales of San Francisco," the latter of which was the standout track of the night and took a jab at hipster partygoers with the line: "All the weekend rock stars are in the toilet/practicing their lines."

It even included a new song, likely to be included on an EP the band plans to release in the coming months.

"This is for all of the American labels," Turner said. "We'll keep churning these out."

But given Turner's droll delivery, the comment could have been just as much a dig at those labels as it was an appeal to them.

In the end, Turner's telling line on "View From the Afternoon"--"Anticipation has a habit to set you up/for disappointment"--proved amiss.