| There is, it turns out, such a thing as too inspired. While every other Tom, Dick, and Interpol are happy to siphon a career out of the middle eight of Love Will Tear Us Apart, there are bands--glorious, gluttonous bands--who gorge so widely upon rock's multifarious recipes that they become overfed with ideas, unsure of their own outline. It was just such a band, on July 6, 2005, that waddled over the threshold of Crouch End's Konk Studios to face the workout of its life.
"The idea from when we started the band was to be quite eclectic and open-minded," says Luke Pritchard, Kooks' barely-20 year old singer. "The reason there's a lot of styles and influences is more due to circumstance. No one really rules the band, everyone's into different styles of stuff so it gets pulled in different directions. We have a lot of reggae and funk and soul influences--there's even some basic jazz in there, nothing too crazy though. That was what we always want to do. Even before we wrote the songs there was the intention of 'What do we all like?' and nobody could pinpoint one because there's so many bands we like."
So after six weeks of "pain" in narrowing their massive canon of songs--they'd written literally hundreds since forming as a "school project" in Brighton in 2003--down to the handful they'd record for their debut album, the Kooks arrived at Konk unwieldy from Too Many Ideas. Were they funk? Acoustic pop? Future jazz? Psych-punk rebel rock? They were all these and so much more--the mythical explosion in John Peel's record shed. Their stunning first single "Eddie's Gun" (a jerk-rock ode to the humiliations of the malfunctioning lob-on) had been a rabble punk take on XTC being run over by the Beatles' "I Need You". Their soon-come Top Thirty hit "The Sofa Song" was a jaunty La'sesque moccasin-tapper. And jostling for position in their slipstream were songs with the names of Velvet Underground, Marvin Gaye, the Clash, the Kinks, Bobby Womack, and Prince tattooed across their breasts with a rusty compass. Two years of voracious, prolific and eclectic songwriting had left the Kooks chomping at the bit but lacking focus or identity.
"We go through quite a few genres, funk, reggae, ska," says guitarist Hugh Harris, "but we also wanted to make a real quick rock 'n' roll record, real simple catchy songs with passion."
To which end, they'd better shape up. Enter production drill-sergeant Tony Hoffer (Beck, Air, Supergrass) who took this lexiconal lard-bucket and over six weeks at Konk, day and night, moulded from it a lithe, unified and endlessly surprising debut--a musical smorgasbord that showcases everything vital and inventive about the Kooks (completed by bassist Max Rafferty and drummer Paul Garred) without once compromising their grab-a-hold-of-a-number-and-see-where-it-takes you spirit of stylistic adventure. Inside In / Inside Out is the sort of genre-shattering record all those Scouse bands were too busy dressing up as samurai to bother perfecting. It takes your hand and leads you up a twisting path beset with shocks from the shadows: if "Seaside" is a seductively languid acoustic intro "D'you want to go to the seaside?"), "See The World" pounces at you out of the dunes like a rabid Hot Hot Heat, spitting garage funk acid. While "Ooh La" is a haunted scallydelic smoulder about some poor life-ravaged ex, on its coattails rides the bile-spewing slice of razor-pop spite "You Don't Love Me." It's an album of knife twists and sudden turns, from the handclappy Zutons campfire sing-along of "She Moves In Her Own Way" through the funk-ska wail of "Matchbox" to the "Half A World Away"-isms of "Jackie Big T*ts" (named after a character from Sexy Beast, Morrissey-baiters!) and it will stand as the most startling, far-reaching, and inspired debut album of 2006. If not the angriest.
"The songs are about relationships and stigmas within relationships," Luke explains. "'Eddie's Gun' is about not being able to get a boner, that's a stigma right? Whereas something like "See The World" or "Time Waits For No Man," those are more about frustrations with the way that things are. We think things are pretty f**ked up, the way that things are, and that's what those songs are trying to express. They're all pretty angry, maybe that's why the punk vibe comes across. It's anger that comes from frustration."
Inside In / Inside Out will not just shock and move the casual listener but challenge as well--one can only imagine the leap of musical faith that must be taken by the passing "Sofa Song" fan to appreciate the shimmering melancholy of "Got No Love" or the serrated neo-Cure of "I Want You Back" or the rampant rawk ramalama of "If Only." And while their fan base is catching up with these frivolous forays, the Kooks will be forging ahead into more unmapped territory--they're planning to chuck out a brand new EP and a mini album before diving into their second album proper, forever the restless sonic explorers.
"I think we've got so much more in us," says Luke, "there's so much more to play. This album still doesn't represent what we can do at all. To do an album in itself is a crazy thing. To put down all your ideas, lay it down and say 'That's it, it's finished' is weird. Even on the album, the producer pulled us in so much to try to keep everything in the same ballpark. It's so hard to let go of it. We wanna keep putting out different kinds of records and different genres. We wanna surprise people."
So just as a listener wouldn't know what the Kooks are until they hear the record, perhaps The Kooks didn't know who they were until they'd made it.
Luke chuckles knowingly. "I don't think I know what our band sounds like now." |
