MTV must be praying that The Cribs will become hugely rich and famous, just so that they can do a Cribs' Cribs special. They may move a step towards that level with The New Fellas, which looks like it could be one of this year's big indie successes.

They have already been on the NME Rizla tour with Maximo Park, building on the fanbase they earned with last year's self-titled debut album.

Now they are back with their second album, which seems to have been anything but difficult to make, with Lloyd Cole producing 11 slices of quality garage rock. Recent single Mirror Kissers actually sounds a bit like early Manic Street Preachers, though the overriding comparison is still with The Strokes.

The languid vocals certainly sound like Julian Casablanca, while the slushy, muted guitar sound is 100% pure New Yoik,all the way from, erm, Wakefield. But if the Kaiser Chiefs can go all the way from Yorkshire to success, there's no reason The Cribs can't follow them.

The impressively-named Hey Scenesters! reached the top 30 (matched by Mirror Kisses this week) earlier in the year, and is certainly the most Strokesy of the album's tracks. We Can No Longer Cheat You is another highlight of scuzzy rock with a catchy chorus.

However, with this kind of music, it is easy for it to get a little bit dull, and Haunted a perfect example of this, sounding like it is supposed to be a melancholy love song but ending up as just a dirge. However, there's still enough on here to delight fans of garage rock and propel The Cribs a little bit closer to owning the kind of houses that MTV would want to look round.

But, as Haunted proves, they don't yet have the kind of originality or variety that a really great band needs, and another album like this could well find them in the same kind of rut that The Strokes seem to have ended up in. It'll do for now though...