- Label
- Virgin
- Release date
- 14th April 2008
- Genre
- Indie pop
- Buy this album
- Order CD
Brighton indie popsters strive to capture moment, fail
Some people – this reviewer included – struggled to see what other people found in the music of The Kooks to make them popular first time around. In conclusion, after long, careful deliberation following the release of their debut album Inside In/Inside Out, we surmised that the only thing which set them apart from the slew of other fretboard-bothering, overproduced, photogenic jangle-rockers was their hair, which really was quite spectacular. It was hard not to listen to it without imagining the photoshoot-ready, well-conditioned heaps of curls, reflecting the sunshine as effortlessly as the rather bland, forgettable music that trickled into our ears.
Konk, by comparison, ditches the conditioner and proudly wears little bits of twigs in its 'do. The sound striven for is so clearly more "mature", at the sacrifice of the band's main saving grace – the ability to write some nice, genuinely catchy little pop hooks and riffs – that it falls on its own sword. Dragged in so many different directions by conflicting influences, like the punkish proto-edginess of See The Sun, the down-to-earth, hey-yah-hey, The Kinks-via-The Bees drum thuds of Always Where I Need To Be, and the epic rock of Shine On, Konk struggles to settle in one place. While variety in an oeuvre isn't a bad thing, this is the sound of a band who can't make up their mind as to how seriously they want to be taken, or by whom.
More to try: The Bees: Free The Bees The Kinks: ...Are The Village Green Preservation Society
