A notice on the doors informed the Kooks' young audience that this show would be filmed for the Brit Awards - an event that is four months off, and for which nominations won't be announced until January. Perhaps the Brits people are convinced that the Kooks will romp home with the Best Newcomer trophy; perhaps they just want footage of a crowd going ape over an archetypal English pop band. And yet the Kooks have become high achievers without drawing much attention to themselves. When it comes to the year's biggest breakthroughs, Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen have hogged the limelight, leaving this Brighton band quietly to get on with selling as many albums as the Monkeys and winning as many pubescent hearts as Allen.

The revelation that front-Kook Luke Pritchard once dated Katie Melua, his fellow student at the Brits Performing Arts School, didn't help his coolness credentials either. Not that that seems to worry the thousands of 15-year-old romantics who hang on to every gulping syllable uttered by the curly-haired frontman. Tonight, the girls react to Pritchard and the other three Kooks with the ear-splitting madness that afflicted Take That fans over a decade ago.

Musically, though, the group couldn't be less like the That. The Kooks - in concert, at least - are harder, rockier and more basic, roaring through their 45-minute stint as if they had been shot out of cannons. The cute album Inside In/Inside Out got a brisk going-over that scoured away every tear-splotched nuance. Naive, which has been in the singles chart since March, was rebuilt into a terrace chant; She Moves in Her Own Way was divested of its sentimental sweetness; and on Ooh La, Pritchard thumped an acoustic guitar as if he hated it. Making every second count, he didn't waste time speaking to the crowd, even when someone's vest top was flung on to the stage. Who knew the cuddlesome Kooks were rockers at heart?

· At the Ambassador, Dublin, on December 10 and 11 (0870 534 4444). And touring.