November 8th 2014
It was early November and a very cold evening however it was an evening full of excitement because tonight we were going to see the kooks! I have been to many gigs over the years some good some bad some ok. tonight however I did not know what to expect would it be the triumphant return of a former great indie band or a band which should of died many years ago…
either way going to them was very exciting the kooks you see were one of the only one of those 2006 indie guitar craze bands that I had not had chance to see live at their own gig yet, and tonight I was seeing them!
the night started like any other, a nice couple of pints at the footage on oxford road and then to the Manchester academy. The academy was not my favourite venue in Manchester to say the least. The academy is very warm cramped and the drink prices are very expensive so a pre-drink at the pub before any gig at the academy is a necessity. We had purchased our tickets quite last minute through a site called viagogo. I usually like to buy tickets from the venue but as we left it so late the only option was to pay a lot more for the tickets on the internet.
In the pub we ordered some beer, Carling I believe and talked for a good hour about what we expected from the evening, I think I was the most optimistic about seeing the kooks as I had caught 15 minutes of them at Leeds festival a couple of months earlier. I think generally we all wanted to hear a lot from the first few albums all the hits we had come to know and love. The reason for this is what we had listened to from the current album didn’t seem up to scratch especially the lead single ‘down’ which apparently supposed to be the band adopting a new hip-hop style which I don’t think can be classed as music. The new album was produced by a guy lead singer Luke Pritchard had discovered on soundcloud (maybe money was running low or something).
We finished our pints and rolled a couple of cigarettes for the journey, it was a very cold night but we didn’t have coats with us because bringing a coat to a gig is not fun especially considering how warm the academy is.
As we approached the entrance to the academy it was very busy full of kooks fans some new some old. Apparently the kooks have developed a fan base with younger fans through the new album, probably due to articles on NME and regular radio play on Xfm most notably with the second single from the new album ‘around town’.
We entered the academy with the intention of buying as much alcohol as we could carry to the performance area. Luckily there was a deal on where you could get two pints of beer put into a large pint glass for a quite reasonable £5 so we each ordered two big cups each.
We entered the stage area I believe we missed the support act either that or they wasn’t very memorable. We had about ten minutes before the kooks came on stage, in which we managed to finish at least one of the big cups!
The kooks arrived on stage to a thunderous applause which I expected from the reaction they got at the Leeds festival. They opened their set with ‘around town’ which too be fair was quite enjoyable I suppose and the crowd seemed to react well, the atmosphere was really good and they continued by quickly by blasting through some faced paced old songs like ‘see the world’ and ‘ooh la’. Which was good but for me still something was missing but I continued watching.
Soon after the band played new single down which was absolutely fantastic surprisingly (I think more because it was funny to us but the crowd seemed to react well), the kooks were good but the problem was it just didn’t make me feel anything. The main problem was there was very little crowd interaction and it all seemed very rushed and some of the new material really weakened them.
I rushed to the bar when ‘she moves in her own way’ came on as I had already seen it live at Leeds but was back in time for ‘seaside’ which was of course brilliant acoustically however could of come later in the set, I think another problem with the set was the order of the songs didn’t really work as perfectly as they could.
The end of the set came quite quickly once the major hits were out of the way the band left the stage before the encore came on. A couple of minutes went by before they returned to a loud applause. They played ‘sweet emotion’ and ‘see me now’ which seemed an odd choice to finish a pretty all over the place set. ‘See me now’ finished and we knew there would be one more which there was of course.
So here I was stood watching the kooks finish their set which I had enjoyed but it wasn’t great and probably would not make it into my top ten. But still I felt I needed to make the most of these last five minutes after all I was at the kooks one of the first band that I really listened to, so at that moment the younger 17 year old me pushed through the crowd and got to the front just in time to listen to ‘naïve’ which was amazing and brought back a lot of memories.
Over all the kooks sadly were just ok, I kind of wish I would of seen the kooks back in 2006 when they were amazing. Because unfortunately the band I saw was just a shadow of a once great band.
Setlist
- Around Town
- See The World
- Ooh la
- It was London
- Bad Habbit
- Down
- She Moves in Her Own Way
- Eddie’s Gun
- Seaside
- Dreams
- Westside
- Always Where I Need to Be
- See The Sun
- Sofa Song
- Forgive & Forget
- Junk of the Heart (Happy)
Encore
- Sweet Emotion
- See Me Now
- Naive
put-me-in-a-terrorpocket 