GOSPEL singers? Keyboard solos? Is this really The Kooks, the darlings of the indie scene?
I always suspected singer Luke Pritchard had been born ten years too late – that he would have been more comfortable nattering with Echobelly, Sleeper and Elastica at the height of the Britpop cult.
But after 2011’s Junk Of The Heart just scraped into the top ten, it appears the four-piece have had a significant change of heart.
Only in the jangly guitar intro on Forgive & Forget do you recognise the familiar Kooks twang, but this is quickly dismissed for a melody driven by the memories of a dozen disco classics.
Changes of musical tack like this can drown in parody – Stevie Wonder doing Bob Marley springs to mind – but this is far from merely a copy-cat.
This Is London sounds like the Stones on Beggars Banquet, while Pritchard even delves into R&B in Down.
Listening to that, in particular, She Moves In Her Own Way seems a very long time ago. The Kooks have grown up. Welcome to adulthood.
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