With fresh new album, Listen, under their belts, The Kooks have headed back down to Australia to packed out crowds for one of their biggest tours yet, bringing with them popular indie bands Catfish and the Bottlemen, and Aussie boys The Griswolds.
A lot of opening support acts struggle to draw a crowd, but Hordern Pavilion was already practically at capacity as Welsh indie four piece Catfish and the Bottlemen marched proudly on stage accompanied by Outkast’s song, ‘Roses’, as fans cheered at their presence. With only a single album to their name, the guys were still popular, and their songs were familiar to the crowd.
Opening with 2014 hit ‘Rango’ and quickly moving into ‘Pacifier’, the young lads were friendly and chatty with the audience, who were hanging onto every word. The highlight of the set was the boys’ first single ‘Homesick’, before they ended on ‘Tyrants’, a number dedicated to Triple J, which felt like it would never end. Popular as it was, the jam lasted a surprisingly long time, but much like a Family Guy joke managed to swing from ‘ok it’s been enough now’ to ‘now it’s been so long it’s cool again’.
Next act up was Australian indie dance-rockers The Griswolds who were thrilled to be back in their hometown of Sydney, and took to the stage to the beats of ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’. Opening with ‘Right on Track’ the band was loving every minute of their time onstage and being back home. Lead singer Chris Whitehall hinted that this might be their best show ever. With a bit of a ‘yeah, yeah’, the crowd played along, and the band genuinely had fun with everyone, playing through a few older numbers from the Heart of a Lion EP, as well as newer tracks from their recent 2014 record Be Impressive.
When they played 2012’s ‘Mississippi’ Whitehall jauntily claimed it was definitely the best he’s ever heard the track sound, cheekily adding, “I wouldn’t bullshit you guys.” After a rousing rendition of “Happy Birthday” for drummer Lachlan West, and a funky cover of Vance Joy’s ‘Riptide’, the number that finally truly won the crowd over despite Whitehall’s compliments, the lead singer took a trip down into the crowd which went over well, but only really achieved a lot of screaming into the microphone.
At some point during The Griswolds’ set the in house sound guys made the executive decision that loud equals good, so by the time The Kooks made it on stage to open with new number ‘Around Town’ lead singer Luke Pritchard was almost too difficult to decipher over the distortion. Nevertheless, the band rocked out, moving into a few older numbers with ‘See the World’ and ‘Ooh La’, a crowd favourite of the evening.
Playing through a selection of their latest tracks, right back to some of their very first, including ‘She Moves In Her Way Way’, which the crowd adored. Every song built up from the last, and the atmosphere and excitement in the Pavilion was epic – in the true, and least clichéd sense of the word.
With more years in the industry than their younger opening acts combined The Kooks played through an impressive 19 songs during the evening, and the crowd showed no signs of fatigue. The moment they took their bows and stepped off after a huge ‘Forgive and Forget’, the whole were crowd were screaming and stomping for more. The punters gave a deafening roar when they returned after a minute of two, to finish out with a three song encore, closing the night with ‘Naïve’ and a thunderous applause.
With the usual promise to be back in Australia as soon as they could, The Kooks would be warmly welcomed back any time. This is one of their strongest tours in years, and the band is only going from strength to strength with their years of touring and recording experience.
For our full gallery of photos from the gig follow this link. Be sure to catch them on the rest of their tour:
Friday 23rd January 2015 Riverstage, Brisbane (All Ages)
www.ticketmaster.com.au 136 100
Saturday 24th January 2015 Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne (All Ages)
www.ticketmaster.com.au 136 100
