Always where I need to be - The Kooks
The Kooks didn’t used to be huge, you know. There was a time when Luke Pritchard and his merry men were another mop-top bunch of chancers, competing for girls’ hearts and boys’ respect. They certainly weren’t the indie-pop enormogroup they are today.
And then something weird happened. Naive, the group’s fourth single (they released six from the debut album Inside In / Inside Out) got under the skin of everybody with a pair of functioning ears. Radio One’s breakfast show was dropped, and instead they played the single sixty-two times, back-to-back, five days a week (or was that just me?).
Brighton had spawned a monster. And that monster has returned.
Always where I need to be is the comeback single we always expected it to be (arp). Sure, it’ll do-do-do-do your head in (double arp) e-ven-tu-ally (triple arp - that’s it, promise), but you can’t help but feel that Summer’s chomping at the bit after hearing this.
Sure, the goths will hate it for being cheerful. And the emos will hate it for being cheerful. And Jeremy Clarkson will hate it for being cheerful. And that’s just bloody wonderful by me. Buy it. Buy ten. Download it illegally to annoy Metallica too. It’s a crazy life.
I’ve no idea when the single is out, but it presumably precedes the album - Konk - which is released on 14 April (incidentally, the best day of the year. Somebody very special was born.)