{"id":3551,"date":"2014-09-09T12:51:49","date_gmt":"2014-09-09T16:51:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/?p=3551"},"modified":"2014-09-09T12:51:49","modified_gmt":"2014-09-09T16:51:49","slug":"the-kooks-listen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/2014\/09\/09\/the-kooks-listen\/","title":{"rendered":"The Kooks’ Listen."},"content":{"rendered":"

The Kooks’ fourth album, Listen<\/a>\"\"<\/i>, comes after a three-year hiatus that saw lead singer and songwriter Luke Pritchard traveling to the U.S. and collaborating with other songwriters for the first time. The resulting album from their reunion sounds a lot like the old Kooks, just with more pronounced percussion lines. There are some great singles here, with sort of a second-wave Britpop feel that might not play as well in the United States, but it doesn’t have the impact I was hoping for given the layoff and the band’s discussion of a new direction for the disc.<\/p>\n

\u201cDown,\u201d the lead single from the album, is the perfect example of a solid pop-rock song that would play much better in London than Los Angeles. Pritchard always sounds like he’s singing with a head cold, but the opening lines are only missing Peter Sellers following them up with \u201cI wish I could sing like that.\u201d The vocals overshadow the unconventional percussion lines, heavy on cymbals and hand-claps, that make the song otherwise compelling, and probably the best pure pop song on the album, even if the chorus’s silly \u201cdown-down-diggety-down\u201d pattern desperately needs a modulation to another key.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\u201cForgive and Forget\u201d does a better job of melding the influences Pritchard wanted to incorporate in the album, a neo-soul approach that reflected his time in the U.S., here mixing the drums to the front of the chorus (with Motown-style backup vocals) and driving the song on a set of funky guitar lines \u2013 with the funk sound coming from the strumming pattern rather than just the notes. The song comes off as a celebration, emphasized by the brief drum fill right before the 3-minute mark that raises the intensity right before the endless chorus that closes the track. \u201cBad Habit,\u201d the current single, bears similar influences but mixes them into the album’s most conventional rock format, with guitar lines derived from blues-rock standards and drums that nod back to John Bonham after each chorus.<\/p>\n

There’s plenty of experimentation on this album, at least relative to previous Kooks efforts, but it’s a mixed bag of results. The psychedelic \u201cDreams\u201d pairs the Kooks’ best lyrical imagery of the disc with a faux-Arab rhythm and fuzzed-out keyboard line, all of which has the wisdom to get out after three minutes before the clever gambit turns stale. \u201cAre We Electric\u201d shifts back to sunny pop, one of a few moments on the album where the Kooks come off as the smarter, less overproduced OneRepublic. (I can’t stand OneRepublic, but I have to concede that they craft some strong pop hooks.) And if I just play the first fifteen seconds of \u201cIt Was London\u201d for you, you’re going to assume it’s from Spoon’s latest album. But when Pritchard turns more introspective, we get the maudlin \u201cSee Me Now,\u201d a song to the father Pritchard lost at age three, and the perfunctory \u201cWestside,\u201d with a boring drum-machine kickoff (a possible nod to The Human League’s \u201cDon’t You Want Me\u201d) and lyrics that I want to believe are somehow meant to be ironic (\u201cOh we can settle down\/start a family\/you’re still my best friend\/and you’re so good to me\u201d). If that’s \u201clove song number 23,\u201d I’d rather not hear numbers one to twenty-two.<\/p>\n

If the Kooks’ goal on Listen<\/i> was to expand their musical boundaries, I’m not sure we can call it a success. There’s a lot here that’s been done before, either by the Kooks themselves or by a host of other bands, mostly based in the U.S., that have infused soul or funk elements into indie-rock. If instead we evaluate Listen<\/i> on its own merits, however, it’s one of the strongest collections of pop-rock singles of the year, with at least four songs that merit airplay on alternative and pop outlets. If we can just get Pritchard a decongestant, the Kooks might really have something here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Kooks’ fourth album, Listen, comes after a three-year hiatus that saw lead singer and songwriter Luke Pritchard traveling to the U.S. and collaborating with other songwriters for the first time. The resulting album from their reunion sounds a lot like the old Kooks, just with more pronounced percussion lines. There are some great singles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[779,359,852],"class_list":["post-3551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-2014-in-music","tag-alternative","tag-music","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3551"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3551\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3556,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3551\/revisions\/3556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/meadowparty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}