The Kooks

Like a lite-FM version of The Libertines, The Kooks have inexplicitly gained the hearts of Brit-pop fans over here and over there, despite being dismissed by a fair amount of tastemakers that champion their contemporaries of recent years, Arctic Monkeys and Bloc Party. There's a reason for that: the Kooks are just not that great—perhaps, mainly, because they are a nowhere near "kooky."

For that dreaded second album, we're seeing the young band struggling to carve out an identity for themselves and their sound; that point at which fans and mainstream radio listeners alike say,"that's pure Kooks." The problem is, they tread on very familiar, done-to-death subject ground (love and broken hearts), but in ways that scream cliché. "Do You Wanna" asks the question, if someone wants to "make love to me," which cribs Franz Ferdinand's "Do You Want To" (in style and title) and turns it into a slowed-down mimeograph. Not so kooky. The generic rocker, "Stormy Weather," proclaims that Mother Nature's tempestuous state is really an indicator that, woah, dude might be in love. The one aspect of the album that truly is appealing, is that lead Kook, Luke Pritchard, is becoming quite adept at that coveted, swaggery vocal delivery, a factor that is probably the reason so many have been duped by these run-of-the-mill indie bandwagoneers.

—Michael D. Ayers
04.28.08