Music

The Kooks, let’s be honest, are never ever going to be cool. Frontman Luke Pritchard could turn out to be the love child of Marianne Faithfull and Evel Knievel and he would still be seen as, well, one of the five dorkiest men on the planet. We’re guessing, however, that he doesn’t really care, or even notice. Pritchard is an out-and-out pop artist and his guilelessness is probably his most endearing trait. This, after all, was the man who thought it would be a good idea to tell Liam Gallagher about his Ace Of Base cover version, and was then surprised to receive the Fiona Shackleton treatment.

Thus it’s a racing certainty that you already know whether you’ll be buying this album or not. The Kooks appeal to a specific audience who, like the band, believe great music should make people happy. There’s nothing technically wrong with that, of course, but unless you’re already deliriously, Moonie-scale happy, this album’s constant attempts to perk you up will grate, like being told: ‘it might never happen,’ when you’re heading back to the office from the proctologist. Practically every song is a jangly, jaunty, rinky-dink strumathon with a big dopey grin on its face. Although it was recorded in Ray Davies’s Konk studios, it mostly sounds like the work of a band who are heavily influenced by the Small Faces but only own an MP3 of ‘Lazy Sunday’ between them.

Still, ‘Konk’ is a significant improvement on ‘Inside In/Inside Out’. It’s professionally played and produced, and while, say, ‘Always Where I Need To Be’ isn’t as catchy as ‘Naive’, the album is still stuffed with well-signposted hooks and, in ‘One Last Time’, a tantalising glimpse of a more complex, adventurous Kooks  (which, at 23, Pritchard still has time to realise). If you’re a Kooks fan, this is obviously good news. If you’re not, it’s proof that, despite what they say, you can polish a turd.