Get Your Groove On

"It all feels quite new, really – the [songs are] so funky, it changes the way you are with the music, you just want to dance.”

That’s Luke Pritchard’s vibe on The Kooks’ new record Listen, a welcome detour from the British band’s established twee indie sound. For proof of this, you need look no further than the group’s latest clip for single Forgive & Forget. The new music is in the frontman’s bones, and it’s obvious the quartet as a whole are finding a great deal of joy in these songs.

Aussie fans will instantly sight a similarity in presence and delivery to Michael Hutchence, with the track’s main riff holding more than a little INXS vibe to it. Pritchard acknowledges that inspiration, but says it would be “a bit on the nose” if they were aping a specific band completely. There were, however, a few influences that informed the new songs.

“Serge Gainsbourg’s record where he used a lot of African percussion [1964’s Percussions], and then we had some Prince references and stuff like that, but we really started from the rhythm. Personally, I had a big desire to make something danceable.”

That’s why Pritchard got in touch with relatively unknown London hip hop producer Inflo, “a tricky dude” according to the frontman, and one who’d never heard of The Kooks before. Inflo has since told Pritchard that he was originally unsure about the project, but once they got chatting they found they had very similar creative outlooks, even though they were from completely different musical backgrounds.

“We were both searching for something to inspire us – we just clicked instantly,” he smiles. “We talked about music for a couple of hours [when we first met], and then we went into the studio like next week. I didn’t want to make a hip hop record, I just liked his beats and his sound. I really wanted to have a fresh start; I was pretty keen to change and forget the past.

“And what was [even] more attractive [than the fact he didn’t know us] was that he had no idea about any bands or artists around us, which was quite cool,” adds Pritchard, who also produced alongside Inflo. “And our musical heritage – The Kinks, The Stones, Blur – he wouldn’t know those guys. He might know a few songs, but he’s not coming from that world at all.”

Listen arrives roughly three years after The Kooks’ third record Junk Of The Heart; it was a period that saw Pritchard question his ability as a songwriter for the very first time. In hindsight though, he thinks that dark period may have been more positive than anything else.

“I was writing, but I knew deep down and sort of confronted the fact that I was just writing the same shit again and again,” he concedes, “so I needed to do something different and [push] myself.”