A generation of "firework bands" has exploded into the charts. But will the music industry allow them time to develop?

Next month Arctic Monkeys release Fa vourite Worst Nightmare, the follow-up to the fastest-selling debut album in UK chart history. If it seems as if they've never been away, that's because they haven't. Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not was released only in January last year, and since then the Sheffield foursome has been on a treadmill of tours, hit singles and looking awkward at awards ceremonies.

Other successful groups whose new or imminent second albums could hardly be described as "long-awaited" include Bloc Party, Kaiser Chiefs, Editors, Maxïmo Park and Hard-Fi. Rock has become like pop music, where shiny acts such as Steps and S Club 7 used to fire out new material every 12 months, and it moves at such a pace because fans can no longer be relied upon to remain faithful if their heroes step out of the public eye for a few minutes.

Of the top 100 bestselling albums in Britain last year, 14 were debut albums by British artists, compared with eight in 2005. Of the boxfresh successes such as the Kooks, the Fratellis and the Feeling, however, most will never do so well again. The new trend is for "firework bands", which begin their short lives at the top of the charts and then fail just as suddenly with their next effort. "In the past few years, the turnover of the music industry has really speeded up," says Paul Stokes of the NME rock weekly. "You used to be able to go away for a bit after your first record, and the fans would still be there waiting for you. Now there are so many new bands breaking through in the meantime that they can easily forget who you were."

The sunny melodies of the Magic Numbers caused such a stir in mid-2005 that they sold out a 2,000-capacity London venue, the Forum, even before they had released their first proper single. But the band's second album, Those the Brokes, released just 17 months later, vanished from the charts in a blink. The New York quintet the Strokes, largely credited with inspiring the resurgence in indie rock that continues today, have now released three albums to diminishing levels of praise. A spoof article was posted online recently announcing a Strokes "best of" album. The track listing was exactly the same as for their 2001 debut. And the Darkness, probably the most spectacular flop of recent years, got so huge in 2003 that the only way to go was down.

The problem is partly the fault of the bands. If their second albums were indisputably better than their first, as with Coldplay's A Rush of Blood to the Head or Radiohead's The Bends, they would march on to the premier league and sec ure their careers for at least a couple more major releases. But when you have your entire life to write your first record, and just a few weeks between tours and interviews to write your second, quality almost inevitably plummets.

It is also to do with the way young people consume music nowadays, downloading a song here and there and listening to it in the background through tinny computer speakers while updating their MySpace accounts, rather than saving up for an album, travelling to a record shop to get it and poring obsessively over the sleeve notes on the bus home. Loyalty is harder to earn when new sounds are so easily discovered and gig-going is just part of the normal week, like going to the cinema. It doesn't particularly matter who's playing, as demonstrated by the speed with which rock festival tickets now sell out before the line-up of bands has even been announced.

It is also rare in this country for bands to tour for years, slowly building up a devoted fan base before cracking the mainstream, as is still the norm in the United States. For example, Klaxons, the latest British indie darlings, formed barely a year before their debut album blasted into the top ten. The teenage Scottish sensations The View signed their first record deal after their second-ever show. "But when it takes people five minutes to find you, it can also take them five minutes to move on to something else," points out Stuart Clarke, talent editor of the industry publication Music Week.

After succeeding too soon, some bands can become worryingly blasé about how easy it is to sell thousands of albums. "We write pop songs, so there's no reason why we can't keep being successful," says Luke Pritchard of the Kooks. Jon Fratelli of the Fratellis, the recent Brit award-winners whose debut album, Costello Music, has now been in the top 20 for six months, is mistakenly convinced that the band's fans will just lap up more of the same. "I don't reckon we'll be going off to write our concept album," he says. "We might start making the songs a few seconds longer, but nothing more than that."

The Fratellis would do well to listen to Razor light's manager, Roger Morton, whose charges have made the leap from edgy teen favourites to genuine, long-term mainstream propositions. "There was a vivid awareness of 'second-album slump' syndrome and a deliberate effort was made not to fall into the trap," Morton says of the London quartet's self-titled follow-up to Up All Night. The new album is still in the top 20 after almost eight months. "I think a lot of bands are so surprised by their success that they think they have to cling to the style of the first album. Razorlight just said, 'We want to give you ten great songs, because nothing else matters.' You can try whatever marketing you want, but if the band don't have that clarity as songwriters and musicians, forget about it."

"Favourite Worst Nightmare" by Arctic Monkeys (Domino) is released on 23 April

Great second albums

Nirvana Nevermind (1991)

Radiohead The Bends (1995)

Oasis (What's the Story) Morning Glory (1995)

The Stooges Fun House (1970)

Eminem The Marshall Mathers LP (2000)

Public Enemy It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (1988)

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