PRINTSound Advice: The Kooks
Konk
Courtesy of Astralwerks
April 17, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Konk, the Kooks’ second LP, takes listeners on a journey perfectly described in “Kooks,” the David Bowie song that the band adopted its name from — “Soon you’ll grow so take a chance / With a couple of kooks / Hung up on romancing.” On this album, the band agonizes over lost love and has made an album that can serve as the soundtrack for everyday life.
With songs akin to Arctic Monkeys, lead singer and guitarist Luke Pritchard, guitarist Hugh Harris, drummer Paul Garred and bassist Max Rafferty deliver another stellar album after the success of its 2006 debut, Inside In/Inside Out, which sold more than two million copies and generated several hit singles. The British band’s first single, “Always Where I Need to Be,” is probably the most likely to linger in your head with a pop-like hook, “Cause I’m always where I need to be / and I always thought / I would end up with you, eventually.”
Another noteworthy track on the album is “One Last Time,” which calls upon the ABCs to transport listeners back to worry-free days: “A-b-c-d-e-f and g / Oh that reminds me of when we were free / Before life began to tear us apart / Remember those classes when we thought we were so smart.”
Certain tracks like “Gap” crescendo in a Coldplay style and call on the drums and increasing vocal harmonies to compose rousing, passionate moments in the song. “Don’t heap this praise on me, / I know I don’t deserve it. / But what’s so this I see? / Yeah you’re leaving right beside me, / And I miss you, and I need you. / I do.”
The beach-like songs from Konk undoubtedly would have been featured on the dearly departed drama series The O.C. Nearly every song is catchy and includes distinctive sounds from hand claps to drum-solo finales. The Kooks’ freewheeling attitude about romance enables listeners to look back lightly and question why things went the way they did without bringing the present good times to a halt or sending them into a mad state of depression over the “what-might-have-beens.”
Vox Rating: V V V V — A tasty morsel of ear candy
Vox Rating:
