If you like Artic Monkeys and Razorlight then u’ll probably love The Kooks. They draw inspiration of their eponymous name from David Bowie’s song “Kooks” and it has got nothing to do with the word “crooks”. I have just heard their debut album InsideIn/InsideOut and I must say “its pretty neat”. The brief and mellow intro of ‘Seaside’, the album really kicks in to grab the listener by the ears, with each song better than the previous. ‘Sofa Song’ is a strumming, singalong bounce, but ‘Eddie's Gun’ is a rough-around-the-edges jangly rocker, and ‘Ooh La’ is a mellow and melodic stroll chick magnet stuff, all building up to the downright funky tracks like ‘Matchbox’ and ‘Naïve’. And so it continues, through 14 songs, propelled by Pritchard's hiccupping vocal delivery and Hugh Harris's rather excellent guitar playing.
The Kooks had a lot of hype prior to the release of Inside In,Inside Out, rather impressively, they've more than managed to live up to it. And I noticed the song ‘Matchbox’ has a calypso feel to it which is strange for a British band but its best in the album. And ‘Jackie Big tits’…oh sorry ‘Jaaakie big tits’ is a naughty song with naughtier lyrics. Overall The Kooks seem to have got the potential for producing really catchy guitar-pop nuggets plus they’ve got a young Brighton vocalist who can make girls wild.
