I can't help but picture The Kooks through a haze of nostalgia for my early teenage years. They were the band for those who affected musical snobbery without listening to much beyond the charts. Festival cool, but your mum would probably recognise a couple of their songs. The portion of my mental space which they occupied was firmly anchored to the past. Their September album, 'Listen', changed all this. Whatever its detractors have to say, it constituted a bold attempt to crack the shackles of public pigeonholing, and remind us all that they have a place in the musical landscape of the present. Something about the clash between past and present Kooks piqued my curiosity: I looked on with pretentious intrigue as they played to a packed out Corn Exchange on the evening of Tuesday 18th.

To my delight, the new album worked pretty well live. 'Around Town' was the perfect way to start the gig. Full of frantic energy, it gave Pritchard a means to demolish the crowd's restraint before they'd even processed his presence on stage; one felt a real warmth emanate from the audience from the very beginning of the set. 'It Was London' and 'Westside' also got enthusiastic reactions, although the silence that accompanied their opening chords suggested that it might have been the first time that many had encountered them. The Kooks exploited the new material well, getting the audience to belt out the powerful intro to 'Bad Habit' and chorus of 'Down'.

Pritchard was a textbook front man – polished, yet with enough spontaneity to excite the crowd. The screams of delight which followed even his slightest approach to the lip of the stage suggested that The Kooks need not worry about the loyalty of the adolescent female section of their fan base. I expected to be irritated when I saw the ten massive plasma screens dotted around the stage, which showcased colourful imagery throughout the gig. To my surprise, the light show contributed well to the real atmosphere created by the size of the crowd, without being distracting.

That said, on some level I was disappointed by The Kooks’ reliance on old material. 'She Moves In Her Own Way' got the biggest cheer of the night, and they closed the gig with 'Naive'. It must be very frustrating to have gone in such a new direction, and yet feel that your fans still wish they were seeing you in 2006. I felt they could have been braver. Although audience reaction suggested that they were right to play the old stuff, the catchiness of something like 'Seaside' only reminded us of the shortcomings of the new album. It made you regret the disappearance of The Kooks of yesteryear. When I left, it wasn't one of the interesting new tracks that was stuck in my head –instead, I caught myself humming 'Ooh La'.