Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It is the memory of soft urgency, the call out to the children at your feet, the young at heart who wait for you to make the final decision concerning the right time and place in which to give you the nod for the adventure ahead. Let’s Go Sunshine, let us heed the words of the informed, the dreamers, the awake and The Kooks, after all, adventure, in any form, is always worth exploring, it is forever worth the intrigue that once was saluted in the very heart of British popular music.

The Kooks have returned from a four-year absence from the studio and the sunshine they perhaps envisaged may not be the one that people may have believed they were due, but it is the one that perhaps see the band grow with more stature. Anybody can hanker after the same view, fantasise that the sun they saw creep over the hill when they were younger, will be the same one that comes to them for the rest of their lives; however, the sun ages just as we do, and that view is never the same as when you first took in the sense of warmth it provided.

Responsibility is such that the soft urgency of Pop cannot stay in the same format for all time, a band must grow if they are to survive, a group, the artist must adapt, must be willing to change and grow to see the adventure continue. It is a continuation that The Kooks seem willing to embrace, the sound that so many love is still there, the bond between studio appeal and the audience is captured, but as songs such as Kids, All The Time, Fractured and Dazed, Four Leaf Clover, Initials for Gainsbourg, Pamela and Picture Frame play out, what comes across is the subtly of movement, that even in an inch a year, great seismic shifts of personality and design soon appear.

Let’s Go Sunshine, for the future can’t abide stagnation, like tectonic plates, the urge to move on is embedded in the heart, and whilst the power of the Pop influence is always part of some group’s make-up, eventually the volcano formed by the shift in the plates, in the artist’s thoughts, soon spills over and creates a new layer, fall out unavoidable, but the majesty of performance is to be applauded.

Look to the dreamers, the romantics, The Kooks, for the future is in their hands.

Ian D. Hall