The Kooks - Konk

Riding on the new Britpop wave that was jump-started by the Arctic Monkeys a few years back, the Kooks’ debut album “Inside In/Inside Out” rocketed to the top of the UK charts and rounded out 2006 as one of the year’s best-selling albums. However, save for the very strong – and, to some listeners, probably very annoying – regional accents, the Kooks have little in common with the Arctic Monkeys, peddling a very simple, scruffy brand of optimistic pop/rock that’s not complex, and doesn’t try to be.

Where the Arctic Monkeys are edgy, the Kooks are down-to-earth; where the Arctic Monkeys are sarcastic and tongue-in-cheek, the Kooks are charmingly simplistic. So sure, “Inside In/Inside Out” was hardly a masterpiece, but it did pack a handful of stellar singles, from the romantic, swaying “She Moves In Her Own Way,” to the snappy, riff-filled rocker “Naive,” a song so horrendously catchy it was covered by Lily Allen – and her version paled by comparison, with her snarky, tongue-in-cheek style a terrible fit for the song’s, er, naivety.

So we’ve established the Kooks are not the messiahs of popular music. They will never be groundbreaking, they will never write poetic lyrics, they will never be critical darlings. All in all, they’re pretty much the opposite of David Bowie, whose 1971 song “Kooks” is the inspiration for their name. Unlike Bowie, they’re about as chameleon-like as a graffiti-proof brick wall. And on their sophomore effort, “Konk,” they provide just as many surprises as you’d expect: Zero. The closest the album gets to experimental is on the rambling sing-a-long “Tick of Time,” whose stop-start opening and tripped-out sounds of laughing are lifted almost entirely from the beginning of Bob Dylan’s groundbreaking “115th Dream.” In other words, “Konk” is about as predictable as an AC/DC record.

At the same time, “Konk,” like its predecessor, is a perfectly likeable, undemanding rock album. If nothing else, at least the Kooks know when to time their releases, letting the album’s bright, accessible jams loose just in time for the three month stretch of holiday. After all, the music here isn’t headphone stuff. It’s not the kind of thing you’re going to run home to the stereo with and then sit for hours, carefully listening out for all the complex studio trickery and subtle percussive rhythm shifts. If anything subtle is going on here, then it’s the sound of these young lads dropping their beer can in the back of the studio – because “Konk” is made to be blasted obnoxiously from your iPod speakers as you lounge on the beach or in the park, Guinness in one hand, cigarette in the other, and big fat smile on your face.

Kicking off the album on a deceptively downbeat note is “See the Sun,” whose first thirty seconds hint that “Konk” will be a moodier album than its predecessor. I mean, it’s not Morrissey-mopey or anything, but you know, there are no drums, and the lyrics are vaguely, vaguely introspective. After 35 seconds though, the slow-paced acoustic strumming is given a rest, pretty much until the end of the album: the chiming guitar riffs start up, the drums kick in, and we’re on to your prototypical Kooks-ian pop/rocker, catchy and optimistic and undemanding.

The high lasts well into the second track, the fast-paced, throwback retro-rocker “Always Where I Need To Be.” With its quick succession of falsetto hooks and a slightly grimier-than-usual Strokes-ian sound, it’s actually one of the edgiest tracks on the album. Edgy in a “wow these guys probably heard Nirvana once” way, that is, certainly not a “Nine Inch Nails angry, depressed and suicidal” way.

And the good stuff isn’t limited to the first two songs. Once the album hits its mid-section it really hits its stride, with a series of melodic, upbeat rockers that get better and better, one after the other, starting with the scruffy, endearingly awkward “Gap” and ending on a high note with the sprightly guitar noodling of “Shine On,” easily the album’s breeziest, summeriest moment. It’s also the one song whose lyrics don’t fall flat on their face in a mess of lovey-dovey clichés – it might just be me, but I personally find the opening line “Safety pins holding up the things / that make you mine” quite a nifty little phrase. Of course, they then repeat the line an inordinate number of times, but even this repetition is oddly endearing, like a six year old kid who’s so proud of learning a new word that he has to use it in every sentence of conversation.

For the record, “Konk” isn’t without its missteps. “Down to the Market” veers away from ‘off-the-cuff’ towards ‘tuneless and amateurish,’ “All Over Town” is a typically snooze-worthy closer (whoever decided albums should end with downbeat tracks should be severely punished), and garage rocker “Do You Wanna?” is just irritatingly simplistic, repetitive in a way that even Sting, the king of monotony, would balk at.

Then again, none of these songs are unpleasant: yeah, you’d probably skip them if they were on your iPod, but they’d still sound fine playing in the background to your summer BBQ, which is really where “Konk,” and probably most of the Kooks’ discography is going to end up. They’re easy-listening, meant in the kindest possible way – bright, accessible, easy to sing along to, and easy to forget. And to anyone out there who thinks “Konk” should win an award for ‘worst album title of the year’ – you’re not alone!


"Konk" released on 15 April, 2009 by Virgin Records.
Images courtesy of Virgin Records and Empire Online.