The traditional indie rock band is alive and well, certainly up north, where Manchester’s Courteeners and Stockport’s Blossoms play to football match-sized crowds. The fast-rising Sherlocks seem to be next in line.

Their debut album, Live for the Moment, crashed into the charts at No 6 a fortnight ago despite being thoroughly ignored by mainstream media. The band have the sort of backstory that is often presumed extinct. Two sets of brothers from unfashionable Bolton upon Dearne, near Barnsley, formed on their estate and slogged their way upward via a thousand gigs. Appearances with the Libertines and Kings of Leon and on Sky’s Soccer AM have generated an army of boisterous fans who are – as Liam Gallagher used to say – “mad for it”.

They sing along with songs over the PA, get particularly shouty to anything by Blossoms or Oasis and cause such a commotion to the Sherlocks’ unlikely intro tape – Pigbag’s 1982 avant funk stomper Papa’s Got a Brand New Pigbag – that someone should rerelease it pronto. The Sherlocks themselves aren’t bringing funky brass constructions to the dancefloor, but their chunkily anthemic indie rock certainly thrills this audience. Lyrics such as “Where are you gonna go when you leave home?” give their young fans something to relate to while the tunes and Josh Davidson’s sparkling guitar lines make them raise pint glasses in the air.

Songs such as Nobody Knows sound so much like the young Arctic Monkeys that telling them apart may require a DNA test, but – as the scattering of older fans might argue – the other South Yorkshiremen haven’t sounded like themselves for a decade. There’s plenty of the early Alex Turner about schoolboyish frontman Kiaran Crook, whose words have a similar grouchy, bittersweet, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning outlook. “Was it really worth it?” he asks ruefully, which the crowd answer with a massed handclap and chant of “’ere we fucking go.”

It’s not always subtle, but the lovely Turn the Clock shows that they can be delicate and Motions puts a postmodern spin on skiffle. The crowd remove and twirl their tops and take up Live for the Moment’s lyrics (“So please don’t try and run before you can walk”) like a manifesto. The album has already exited the Top 100, but the Sherlocks are not going to go away.

• At Manchester Academy, 15 September. Box office: 0161-832 1111. Then touring to 23 September.