The Kooks couldn't have
chosen a more ironic band name if they tried. There's a long, venerable
tradition of harmless British eccentrics—amateur stamp enthusiasts and
custard obsessives litter Agatha Christie novels and Kinks songs
alike—but musically, The Kooks have nothing in common with well-loved weirdoes
like Ian Dury. Instead, their second album fits squarely into the
Libertines-fixated mainstream of NME-approved buzz bands.
Don't care for their ska-tilting, strummy acoustic guitars and benign rockers Half
a dozen interchangeable ensembles will be along shortly. To pass the time until
then, enjoy their diverse lyrical interests: On "Love It All," for example, the
chorus is "She said 'love it all, love it all, love it all.'" On the next song,
"Stormy Weather," they offer "Yes, it feels like love, love, love." There's
nothing inherently offensive about The Kooks: They're reasonably tight, and
each song is just melodic enough to seem catchy until its memory is erased by
the next. Lousy lyrics alone don't kill them (Coldplay lived), but a surfeit of
competitors does: The fact that they have American distribution instead of,
say, The Ordinary Boys is little more than an accident. The Libertines were, at
least briefly, experts at derivative synthesis; poorly derived from a
derivative, The Kooks add little to the mix.