Sunshine is guaranteed at The Kooks Picnic gig
New album a throwback to band’s early stuff
The first live notes of The Kooks’ third record Let’s Go Sunshine will be heard in Stradbally as the British four-piece introduce their latest offering to the world.
Best known for their breakthrough record Inside In/ Inside Out, which went five times platinum at the end of last year,
The Kooks are back with a record that returns to their roots.
Ahead of their performance at Electric Picnic in Co Laois next weekend, lead singer Luke
Pritchard spoke to The Beat about his inspiration for the album, as well as his love for music and Irish festivals.
“There’s a lot of love there you know, I can’t think of many other countries that I’ve been to where everyone f ***** g loves music and plays music,” he said.
“The crowds are always in tune when they sing back to you, we’re really looking forward to it.”
Let’s Go Sunshine is a bold longplayer that distils The Kooks’ timeless sound into its purest form while pushing it forward into a more expansive and mature space.
It’s a moving, energising and timelessly melodic record and incisive in its portrait of modern British urban life
“The record is kind of a living diary in many ways, and I think the kind of over-riding feeling of the album is hope.
“It’s quite a hopeful record and we made a conscious effort to make something uplifting and positive
“I’ve been through tough times like everyone has but I don’t subscribe to the notion that you only write good songs when you’re feeling miserable.”
Songs like Initials for Gainsbourg are steeped in romance with The Kooks’ signature blend of nuanced humour added in for good measure.
After the release of Listen the band made a conscious decision to return to the process that brought them such huge success with their first record back in 2006.
“I think on listen we moved away from our sound a bit you know and quite quickly realised that we wanted to return to what The Kooks are all about on the new record,” said Luke.
“It was definitely a conscious decision to move away from that sound, I wanted to get back to the guitar and the notebook, as a songwriter that was something that I craved and I think that comes through on Lest’s Go Sunshine.
“I really went on a mission to write the best songs I’d ever written before bringing them to the band, I stewed over every word.
“From my point of view it’s very much like the first album in the sense of the process behind the making of the music.
2006 was a fantastic time for guitar music in Britain and Ireland and further afield.
Inside In/inside Out, which spawned hits such as Naïve, She Moves in Her Own Way and Ooh La, came out at a perfect time for the band who gained significant notoriety as a result of their ambitious debut.
But what about the state of play now?
“For me the song is the most important aspect, and a great song in any style will carry through,” said Luke.
“The problem that we have is that guitar music put against hyper produced sounds that audiences are listen to en masse nowadays doesn’t really fit in with the programming.
“Guitar music becomes something almost boutique and other worldly now when put up against modern pop music.
“What you are seeing now is a lot of bands coming and going very quickly, which doesn’t seem to happen as much with what you’d called guitar music, maybe because it’s based more on reality,” he concluded.
’The crowds are always in tune when they sing back to you, we’re really looking forward to it..’