Album: The Kooks, Konk (Virgin)

Kookin' on gas? Just konked out, more like

"Don't heap this praise on me," sings Luke Pritchard (on "Gap"). "I don't deserve it." It's generous of him to offer his permission to withhold praise, but we'd have gone ahead anyway.

'Konk', the second album from the stage school numbskulls, will sell more than their debut, because there are clearly a lot of CD consumers about whose favourite 90s band was Dodgy. Pritchard's revolting warbly voice and grotesque glottal stops, and his bandmates' bloody awful busker rock are nauseating enough at the best of times, but when he enquires "Do you wanna make love to me", you marvel at V2's cruelty in not providing a complimentary sickbag. The Kooks, completely undeserving of the beautiful Bowie song from which they take their name, are a band with no poetry in their souls, nothing to say that isn't a cliché and no tune that doesn't go exactly where you expect it to. Their very existence makes you wonder whether we've angered some vengeful deity who's decided that, no, one Razorlight isn't enough, and that 'Konk' consists of another dozen slices of sunny, strummy slop custom made for airplay on daytime radio. Horrible, horrible, horrible.

Pick of the Album: Some quite nice guitar work, I suppose: 'Sway'

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