STAYING TRUE TO A CLASSIC RECIPE THE ARTS: MUSIC THE ARTS: MUSIC CD

THE KOOKS****

Konk (Virgin)

UNLIKE many of the post-boy band British guitar groups - and Razorlight particularly - The Kooks benefit from a lack of rock star pretensions. "We're the sort of band who'd trash a hotel room then tidy it up afterwards, " said singer Luke Pritchard in a recent interview. No worries. Their real talent is in writing the kind of hooks that, once heard, require particularly intrusive therapy to remove from your subconscious.

Their first album - Inside In/Inside Out (2006) - sold two million copies due largely to the profusion of such hooks, with seven of the 14 tracks reaching the top 40. They haven't changed anything fundamental for their second album. And why would they?

Konk was recorded in Konk, the north London studios of The Kinks' frontman Ray Davies. If there is a connection between the bands - beyond all those Ks - it is this: both know a good melody when they hear it and both, in their own ways, are subversive. In The Kinks' case the songs were pop, but with deliberately shredded ampli. er cones and sexually ambivalent lyrics; the Brighton-based Kooks stretch the current pop format in the opposite direction, with clean- as-awhistle choruses and near-zero lyrical ambiguity.

Two years of touring have done wonders for Pritchard's voice and - again under producer Tony Hoffer - the band sounds a little . ercer.

There are a few minor lows. Do You Wanna's festival-destined refrain - "Do you wanna make love to me/I know you wanna make love to me" - is catchy as hell but the most innocuous sexual chant imaginable, incongruous with the thousands of mud-splattered, welly- wearing festival-goers who will compulsively sing it.

That aside, The Kooks are at risk of being regarded as a classic British songwriting outfit, growing stronger with each release.

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