The Kook’s latest album is an adequate indie-pop creation but it lacks any real passion or drive. Are the band’s best days behind them?
The record’s opening tracks are light and cheerful. The album’s single “All the Time” has the potential to be an indie classic and we can picture it going down well at shows even years down the line.
If you’re a Kooks fan or are familiar with other 00s indie bands, there will be little on the album after this which is likely to impress or surprise you. It’s consistently average and un-daring. It doesn’t feel like The Kooks giving it their all, it sounds like The Kooks ‘having a go’ at their fifth album because someone told them too.
Still, there are some moments on the album which remind us why we loved The Kooks in the first place. “Tesco Disco” has a promising riff and would go down well at festivals. It could have been brilliant only it seemed to regress back into more of the same. The subsequent track “Honey Bee” also shows promise and definitely has the ‘feel good’ factor. It’s a poppy love song and would work well on a honey sweet summer playlist.
There are no other songs which are particularly worth mentioning. As a whole, if you are an old fan of The Kooks, you’re unlikely to dislike the album. For a new generation of listeners, however, I can’t see how the album would convince anyone to delve into the rest of the band’s works. That’s a shame because their earlier albums have some pretty great tracks on them. Perhaps the fact that the album released prior to Let’s Go Sunshine was a ‘greatest hits album’ is a sign that the band’s best days are behind them.
We don’t want to be too brutal because The Kooks and all their mediocre indie pop are too innocently nostalgic to hate on. To finish on a positive, the album’s closer “No Pressure” could be a great encore at one of their shows and even though the album was disappointing overall, if they released another one after this, we’d probably still give it a go.
