Luke Pritchard has gone on record saying that Konk is his band's "pop album," and initially, I thought he was just talking a gang of shit. Musically, the Kooks have never been the toughest nut to crack, and on the surface, this is a work obsessed with a sense of lineage-- their handle factually references David Bowie, but the album title slyly and phonetically conjures the Kinks, the band these guys try hardest to emulate. And to top it off, the record's namesake is the London studio in which it was recorded; it just so happens the owner is a certain Mr. Ray Davies. Similar scenarios: Lenny Kravitz's Electric Ladyland. Oasis' Abbey Road.
But it turns out Pritchard is right after all, because the group's well-selling debut Inside In/Inside Out was a pop album, and the only real difference between itself and Konk is that this one doesn't have a song called "Jackie Big Tits" on it. More accurately, it's a Britpop album, meaning it's more than content to offer fingers up to the Albion-extolling NME altar with the same old knucklehead boys-club ethos that, to paraphrase Homer Simpson, likes its beer cold, TV loud, and homosexuals flaming.
Take "Do You Wanna", which nicks from the Franz Ferdinand song of the sorta-same name with an audacity that's almost admirable, but unlike Alex Kapranos and co. the Kooks have no use for playful ambiguity. "Do you wanna make love to me?" asks Pritchard instead, but it's obviously a rhetorical question, because this guy's a rockstar now and you know the drill-- "I know you want to make love to me," he says, but it doesn't come off as Rod Stewart swagger so much as the kind of ugly, self-mythologizing groupie bait we're used to from Kings of Leon.
Nope, these guys ain't talkin' 'bout love...except when they are. Which is most of the time. Pritchard has also said "we make songs for girls," certainly a fine goal and probably the purpose of nine out of 10 bands at least, except that most of Konk feels targeted towards some imagined audience instead of being borne of real inspiration. Following "Do You Wanna" is "Gap", which peppers Tony Hoffer's overactive strings with come-ons like "please don't go," and "I miss you and I love you and that's true"-- with any modicum of self-awareness, it could've been a lacerating parody of the kind of person who'll say anything to get in your pants. By chopping off several limbs from the Darkness' "Love Is Only a Feeling"-- the righteous soloing, the lovely pastoral arrangement, Justin Hawkins' ability to totally nail the hook that simultaneously sends up and transcends power balladry-- "Love It All" starts us back at square one, offering a sort of lunkheaded acoustic version of the Rapture song of almost the same name.
If you hadn't gotten the point by then, what does "Stormy Weather" feel like? "It feels like love, love, love." By the time that's done, these guys are so drained that they attack "Sway" like Our Earthly Pleasures at half mast, ushering in a mostly unmemorable final quarter. At least they're knowledgeable enough to frontload Konk with the most enjoyable tracks, including lead single "Always Where I Need to Be", which wisely eschews any of Pritchard's wolf cries with a wordless hook and zippy guitars. But while the vague send-up of an upwardly mobile "Mr. Maker" is catchy enough and aimed directly at Parklife pastiche, it just exposes how the rest of this record has a hard-on where Damon Albarn has a heart or a brain.
And that will be more than enough for some people, but it shouldn't be with bands like Los Campesinos!, These New Puritans, the Long Blondes, and Glasvegas re-invigorating British indie and challenging the NME's necropolis of complacent, reactionary, and outmoded ideas of "doing things the right way." For self-professed straight-shooters like the Kooks, anyone whose greatest influences aren't sex, drugs, and dead white British bands might as well be some blogger in their mom's basement, but Konk feels like a mere cowardly act, a TPS report from a band that strives to be nothing more than British pop's ultimate company men.
