Matt Diehl
April 17, 2008
The Kooks, Terra Blues, on Bleecker Street, New York City.
“Naïve” was the Kooks’ first hit in their native England; aptly, mop-topped frontman Luke Pritchard was supposedly only 16 years old when he wrote it. Since then, however, fame has taught them a thing or two. The Kooks, along with Arctic Monkeys and Kaiser Chiefs, ushered in a new wave of barely legal Britpop: the Kooks’ debut, Inside In/Inside Out, was one of the U.K.’s best-selling albums of 2006, when the oldest member was but 21. Despite their youth, the band—Pritchard, guitarist Hugh Harris, bassist Max Rafferty, and drummer Paul Garred—prove wizened souls down to their name, filched from a David Bowie song old enough to be their father. “I’ve got all these old vinyls,” Garred explains, flipping through his stash of Funkadelic, Hendrix, and Buddy Holly.
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