Love ‘em or loathe ‘em, kudos to The Kooks, who remain standing 16 years after their debut album, while most of their indie landfill peers have fallen by the wayside. The Brighton band’s sixth album was partially written in Berlin in an effort to make a more “European”-sounding album in the wake of Brexit. There are no political statements within Luke Pritchard’s lyric sheet, however. Although there is a sting in the tail of songs such as Cold Heart, most of these tracks are a reflection of the frontman’s newfound domestic bliss. The reggae-pop-tinged Beautiful World is an ode to his young son, while others such as Oasis and Without a Doubt (”It’s you that I come to when everything else if falling apart / Without a doubt, you’re the best thing in my life”) pay tribute to his wife.
The band’s incorporation of 1980s synths (Closer sounds like something from the soundtrack of The Lost Boys, while the jerky Oasis and the pinging electropop of Jesse James pilfer from Duran Duran’s songbook) is probably as close to experimental as you’re likely to hear from The Kooks, even if songs such as the saxophone-infused Sailing on a Dream desperately attempt to ape the likes of Bowie and Talking Heads. Like most of their previous material to date, this is another largely inoffensive, occasionally toe-tappy but mostly forgettable collection of indie pop songs.
