The Courteeners: Unite And Conquer

"Day off? Not really, mate. I've just about had time to get to Sainsbury's for a bottle of milk!"

Liam Fray is a busy young man. Gigwise has been on the poor lad's trail for a week now, interrupting recording sessions and soundchecks in the vain hope of getting 20 minutes of the charismatic frontman's time. But when you're the singer in The Courteeners – a band who are probably the best-equipped British group since the Arctic Monkeys to become really ****ing massive – even your days off are spent working.

After days of chasing, we catch Fray on his mobile as he's walking to the band's rehearsal room in Salford. This time eight days days ago, The Courteeners would have been warming up for potentially the watershed gig of their young career. The band played in Camden and, for the first time, proved that the mass adulation they are already used to in Manchester could be generated in the capital.

"It was just lethal", says Fray, his broad tones cutting through the whistling of passing vehicles. "We did have quite a few down from Manchester, but even so, the place was packed. It was quite surreal." It's something that Fray and his fellow Courteeners – Campbell, Cuppello and Conan – are certain to encounter with increasing frequency now that copies of debut single 'Cavorting' have been flying off shelves as quickly as they were put there. "It'll be interesting to see how the gigs in other cities go now the single's out. When people know the words and the tunes, that's when they'll start to let themselves go," says Fray.

'Cavorting', a tale of coke-fuelled nights out in love with being young, is pretty much the perfect debut single for any band – but particularly so for The Courteeners, so resonant are its themes with anyone who has ever swaggered into a club feeling like Liam Gallagher and staggered out later like Frank Gallagher. Manc clichés aside, the song, along with b-side 'No You Didn't, No You Don't', genuinely does make you feel like a rock'n'roll star. Who were the last band to do this? Please don't say The View…

As apt an opening statement as the single may be, it's not so well known that the lead track was written while Fray was performing as a solo artist. However, there is no question of The Courteeners being simply a vehicle for the singer's own ambitions. "It was always going to be a band," he asserts. "I was just pissing about before. But when a few people started turning up, I thought – 'if it's gonna go off, it has to be with a band'. And it's not my band – it's OUR band. Definitely."

Things certainly are 'going off' for The Courteeners. 'Cavorting' might as well have been called 'Cavorting: Single of the Week', so often has the juxtaposition been used, but even before the reviews started to come in, the band had already booked a show at Manchester's sizeable Academy 2. It's hard for parallels not to be drawn with the ascent of Arctic Monkeys or even Oasis, though Fray acknowledges this can be a mixed blessing. "It is a hindrance, because straight away people are given an angle. If we'd have been from, say, Leeds or Liverpool, we wouldn't have got the Oasis thing nearly as much as we have done. Yeah, I'm called Liam and I've got the haircut, but that's pretty much it! Obviously they're a massive influence, but I can't hear it in our music, to be honest."

One other aspect of The Courteeners which has drawn comparisons with their fellow Mancunians has been their surety of purpose and hunger for great things. Fray was recently quoted as saying that the band were waiting for a major label to come along to back up the band's confidence. However, Fray feels that the soundbite in question was an unfair reflection of his feelings on the matter. "I don't know where that came from! It made us sound proper ****ing pompous!" protests the Middleton man. "The 'needing a major label' thing is all bollocks – if you've got enough belief in what you're doing, you could put it out on your Nana's label! Obviously, there's advertising and all that, but if you look at the internet, word of mouth and all that stuff, then you see you can do it on your own."