Eleven songs make summer in your head – The Kooks deliver musical antidepressants with “Never/Know”

Eleven songs bring summer to your head – The Kooks deliver musical antidepressants with "Never/Know." Luke Pritchard sings that it's "tough at the top." This "Tough at the Top" is a reggae piece, but the offbeat alternates with driving, punky rock 'n' roll. The Police did something similar in their early days. Ambiguous sound, ambivalent lyrics: The Kooks' singer laments having to be the face of the band, "the one whose head is on the guillotine."

Pritchard doesn't want to be a star, but at the same time, Pritchard enjoys it and is amused by himself. This one-on-one-on-the-other aspect has always been appreciated by the Brighton band ever since they emerged in early 2006 – in the shadow of Sheffield's Arctic Monkeys, who released their first album on the exact same day to universal acclaim. "Forgettable," wrote Rolling Stone (US edition), however, about the Kooks' "Inside In/Inside Out." Two million copies were sold. Now the dreaded seventh album is here.

It's damn beautiful and called "Never/Know." And what guitarists Pritchard and Hugh Harris, (touring) bassist Jonathan Harvey, and drummer Alexis Nunez pack into it is a magnificent cross-section of pop history: with 1960s R&B ("China Town"), references to early Beatles ("If They Could Only Know") and Kinks ("Let You Go"), funk ("Arrow Through Me"), reggae ("Sunny Baby"), and Brit-gospel ("Echo Chamber").

Everything is outrageously catchy. Song after song, "Never/Know" creates a summer in the listener's head. The title track is about living life without fear, even when you never know what's waiting for you around the next corner. "Sunny Baby" is a call from young family man Pritchard to find balance and not let all the bad news get you down.

According to Pritchard, the entire album is about living life with joy. Eleven pop antidepressants that are very useful these days, and that work, even when the lyrics are about decadence, memories of loved ones who have passed away, and settling scores with an ex. Or when – in "Compass Will Fracture" – it's about the distortion of truth and the loss of morals. In this song, which Pritchard calls "a social commentary on what's happening in the world," the Kooks sound like both the Kinks and the Stones.

The New York Times called Pritchard an "unlikely rock star" in 2006, when the school friends from Brighton tried their luck in America. "We're the kind of people who trash a hotel room and then clean it up again," the singer explained to the newspaper at the time. The newspaper saw the band's secret in its "dichotomy of cool and uncool." A frontman who covered the Dolce & Gabbana label on his leather jacket because he loved it and didn't want to come across as a brand fetishist. Really?

Better than all the unreflective dandies in the business of charlatans. And in the end, it's the music that counts. With "Never/Know," Pritchard can rest his head anywhere – the guillotines are elsewhere. And yes, you never know what you'll encounter around the corner. But in this case, it could be The Kooks' first number one album in Germany.

The Kooks – “Never/Know” (Virgin Music/Universal)