Louis XIV Slick Dogs and Ponies by: Ed Butler Tue:19-Feb-08 Label: Atlantic Year: 2008 WB rating 32 out of 100

Libidinous rockers abound across the history of modern music. Since the first man picked up a guitar and plugged it in, women have wanted to sleep with them. As such, it's only natural that some bands have earned a reputation, through actions and music, as globetrotting Lotharios. The Red Hot Chili Peppers' early years were soaked in sweat and semen, Anthony Kiedis seemingly challenging himself to greater levels of lyrical perversity, climaxing (pun utterly intentional) on the fairly discomforting 'Purple Stain' on Californication. Led Zeppelin wrote the book on the subject, Robert Plant's simulated moaning on 'Whole Lotta Love', both thrilling and controversial.

But bands like these are a product of their environment. They never needed to convince anyone of their sexual predations. They just were. Listening to Louis XIV swagger through Slick Dogs and Ponies, by comparison, is the musical equivalent of getting smacked in the face by a 12-inch rubber dildo. From their debut album The Best Little Secrets are Kept, singer Jason Hill made a hash of keeping secret the fact that they were in this for pussy. Any pussy; in fact any orifice into which they could pour their retarded teenage sexuality, and then clothe it in a mantle of unimaginatively re-treaded rock.

With barely concealed adolescent bravado, Hill and cohorts spend 43 minutes telling anyone who'll listen about their sexual perversions and (dubious) conquests. Apparently, according to opener 'Guilt by Association', they're so thoroughly bad-ass that merely being in the same room with them contaminates you with the same puerile muck. Those hoping that the infra red, sex tape cover art on Slick Dogs and Ponies, is suggestive of a higher purpose, some commentary around the position of sexual gratification in society, or at least some measure of irony in the music are sure to be sorely disappointed – at least by the point on 'There's a Traitor in This Room' when Hill spouts the execrably immortal "Ass on the carpet/Legs on the couch/All you want is my love in your mouth".

Now and then, in an effort to disguise the unadulterated misogyny of proceedings, Hill reverts to the relative safety of metaphor and innuendo, like "My gear is down/I'm circling round/I'm coming down", on single 'Air Traffic Control, which is possibly even more offensive in its inanity that its outright suggestiveness.

Of course, all this rubbish sexual bravura would be tolerable if it came in a passable musical package, but aping the Stones and other 'classic rock' bands in what barely passes for imitation doesn't even do Jet any justice, hand claps and all. The fact that Jet were successful owes at least something to them making quasi-cover songs in a nifty new package. Soaking every single track in strings at some point or another also doesn't do anyone any favours, only making each song less distinguishable from its counterparts.

The great cock rockers of history never needed to tell the audience about their conquests. If you listen carefully, they're just talking to the conquests themselves, and certainly feel no need to prove anything to anyone. Going by the teenaged sexual insecurity on display throughout Slick Dogs and Ponies, Louis XIV's next release is likely to have a track titled 'I Have an Enormous Penis and it's WAY Bigger Than Yours'. Can't wait.