The Kooks biography

2005 was the year the Kooks first broke - having formed at college in Brighton, and comprising Pritchard on guitar and vocals, Hugh Harris on lead guitar, Max Rafferty on bass and Paul Garred on drums, their shared love of diverse influences such as Dylan, the Strokes, the Police, and anything else they could find in their parents' record collections, was writ large in their early output. They were swiftly snapped up by Virgin, and debut single 'Eddie's Gun' (2005) tackled the thorny topic of erectile dysfunction - Pritchard was clearly having a pop at Katie Melua about a certain time he was unable to...er...have a pop at Katie Melua...

Despite being referred to in some quarters as a 'mini-pops Razorlight', and, even worse, 'melodic skiffle' (shudder), the Kooks' own take on bright and breezy guitar pop and white-boy reggae was pretty well-received all round, and they helped themselves by producing music that was rather hard to actively dislike. Plus, they had the magic ingredient of a catchy chorus each time, with sing-along tunes such as 'Ooh La' and 'She Moves in her Own Way' being instantly taken to the breast of, and belted out by, the summer festival crowds.

In addition to the music, and carrying on the British music scene's traditional love of a good spat - think Blur/ Oasis, only even more sad - there was also a pretty sizeable rivalry brewing with Razorlight. And of course, the only thing as likely to get you some free column inches as slagging someone off in the NME was to get slagged off in the NME. Thus, a war of words (well...in the grand scheme of things, more of a small skirmish of words...) between Pritchard and Razorlight's front-man Johnny Borrell kept both bands in the public eye just as much as the tunes both were penning.

Borrell perhaps hadn't thought it through quite thoroughly enough - starting with the accusation that Pritchard was copying his style, he then went on to compare them to Avril Lavigne, and his critique of their music went thus: '...it sounds like the band are literally rolling over, sticking their arse in the air and begging Radio 1 to fuck them'.

Hang on, Johnny old fruit - do you mean that was what you were trying to do, and they were copying you? I'm confused... anyway, Pritchard's retort was a rather more low-key one, dedicating a live rendition of his song 'Naïve' to Borrell at a gig in May 2006, but rather than being naïve, both protagonists had actually been rather canny in vamping up the rivalry, such as it was, between them. 'Naïve', which had been their fifth single from debut album 'Inside In/Inside Out' (2006), hit the top five, and all was pretty rosy in their garden.

The aim of the band from the outset, according to their front-man, has always been to right the wrongs of recent years, at least in terms of the dirty word that 'pop' has become. Unashamedly drawing parallels to the universal appeal of the Beatles, the singer stated as far back as January 2006 that he wasn't afraid of the Kooks being labelled as 'pop' by the press, even despite the fact that '...bands like Blue and Busted have given pop a bad name. It's used as a generic term now for rubbish, soulless music, but it doesn't have to be like that.'

Having toured the first album extensively, selling out venues in Europe and the US, they also gained a lucrative and high-profile support slot for the Rolling Stones - giving the group another step up the fame ladder, and laying a solid base on which to release their next album. They recorded the bulk of their second long-player in Ray Davies's 'Konk' studios in North London, and, after what must have been an exhausting brainstorm session, opted to name it: 'Konk'. Further still, they announced that they'd be releasing a second album alongside it on the same date, of more new material and alternative versions, recorded at the Rak studio complex, and called...er...'Rak'. (Here's hoping they all had a cup of tea and a good sit down after the effort involved in coming up with that name).

With his own typical quotability, Pritchard was happy to tell anyone that would listen that the stage was well set for the second album's arrival in April 2008, particularly given that the current state of the charts had been 'rubbish', and that '...there's been a lull and some really shit records have been released recently' - the singer explicitly naming Duffy as one of his bêtes noires.

What's probably rather disappointing for the more cynical amongst is us that Pritchard and his band-mates - despite losing bassist Max Rafferty and replacing him with Dan Logan, of fellow Brighton band Cat the Dog - are fully capable of churning out further catchy single hits and putting their money where their mouth is, musically. With 'Always Where I Need To Be' they have surely stumbled on yet another addictive-as-crack refrain - why bother with lyrics when a 'doo-doo-doo' will do? - and, with 'Konk', another hefty slice of sun-kissed music that festival goers will be spouting enthusiastically back at them for the foreseeable future.

• The Kooks Discography