It was late 2004, Britain's hottest band was hitting North American shores, and the program director of Canada's biggest "new rock" station was decidedly unimpressed.

"The Libertines are getting all kinds of friendly press and coverage in the U.K.," 102.1 The Edge's Alan Cross complained. "And we had them in here last week and they were absolutely wretched. You get burned so many times."

For the record, the short-lived Libertines were a terrific band. Their first album, Up the Bracket, was arguably the best British debut since Oasis' Definitely Maybe; their second, self-titled effort stands as one of the all-time great breakup albums, not least because it was about the breakup of the band's two (ostensibly straight) front men. But even discounting the shambolic state they were in by the time they reached Toronto - sans Pete Doherty, who was awash in a haze of drugs back home, and left to the devices of ambivalent co-front man Carl Barat - there was no way they could match the expectations set for them by a certain magazine.

The Libertines, like so many British bands before and since, were victims of the NME effect - the one sure way for a band to achieve a backlash among people who've never even heard their music.

The NME - New Musical Express - is not alone among British publications in cranking up the hyperbole to 11 for every cocksure act that emerges out of East London or Manchester with a couple of decent singles and the right hair. But the venerable weekly tabloid is by far the biggest offender - seizing on a different band every few months and breathlessly proclaiming it the most exciting of its generation. Occasionally, it gets it right; more often, decent bands wind up crushed under the weight of absurdly premature hype.

The latest to ride the NME's wacky roller coaster is the Arctic Monkeys. Barely out of their teens, the northern Englanders have ridden clever lyrics and a reasonably fresh sound to the fastest-selling debut album in British history.

Initially, the Monkeys' buzz was generated by live shows and online file-sharing. But in its inimitable way, the NME has since taken up the cause - not just with an effusive review and a slew of cover stories, not just with its recent award show naming them "Best British Band," but by proclaiming their lead singer "the coolest man on the planet" and naming the Monkeys' debut, Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not the fifth greatest album of all time.

If history is any indicator, such insane proclamations will bear mixed results in the U.K. - massive chart-topping success for this album and perhaps another, then a quick shift to the doghouse when it's determined their subsequent work doesn't befit the greatest band of all time. But in North America, it could prove fatal right off the top.

For starters, there's a reason music journalists on this side of the pond typically hate dealing with NME faves. When your debut is deemed superior to anything in the entire Beatles' cataologue by your country's most influential music magazine, and the rest of the British music press subsequently hangs on your every coked-up word, the ego can get a tad inflated. Then you get to North America, and it's hard not to treat writers who can't name each of your b-sides with poorly masked contempt.

The bigger factor, though, is that for much of the North American music press - not to mention everyone from industry execs to bloggers - NME hype is considered less an asset than a cause for alarm.

Consider the review of the Arctic Monkeys' debut found on the typically tame Web site of Canada's Chart magazine. "NME has done its best over the years to make famous bands we would never care about if we didn't somehow know every single move they made," reviewer Noah Love seethed. "Remember Kula Shaker? How about Razorlight? Even better, in three months, tell me how much you still spin your Kasabian disc. Throw Arctic Monkeys on the crap heap. There has never been a wave of NME slobbering so big as the one that's following these Libertine wannabes. They can't play their instruments, their lyrics are embarrassing and they don't have one truly memorable song. Don't, under any circumstances whatsoever, believe the hype."

Actually, Razorlight and Kasabian produced two of the better live shows I saw last year. (Kula Shaker was never really my thing.) But beyond a contingent of Anglophiles, most North Americans will never hear either of them.

Most fans here aren't so devoted that they sit around monitoring the NME. But the same can't be said for the writers, bloggers and program directors many rely upon to set their playlists - people who've taken to dismissing the latest British buzz band altogether.

It's no wonder several British musicians I've spoken to in the past year have worn their lack of love from the British press as a badge of honour. They may not spend a few months as the coolest men on the planet, or fleetingly lay claim to one of the greatest albums of all time. But at least they don't suffer the strangest consequence of the NME effect: Being killed by overexposure in places you were never exposed to at all.