While on the road from New York City to Washington D.C. for The Kooks’ North American “All Over the World” Tour, Luke Pritchard shared with mxdwn fascinating details behind the band’s latest album Never/Know. Not afraid to admit that The Kooks were in a sense, running away from the sound that catapulted them to the mainstream, Pritchard wanted to create an album that took them back to those early days as humble teenagers.
The mindset was to reconnect with the artists that inspired the band, to not overthink and to get back to their guitar roots. Pritchard sat in the basement of a house and introspectively wrote lyrics that led to a stripped back, cohesive album that seriously emulates the sound of the specific pillars he drew on for inspiration.
Never/Know is a reminder to just let life happen, to be grateful for what you have and how one person, one moment, can completely change the direction of your life and your perspective. The small things can be very meaningful and everything can change in an instant.
mxdwn: Hi, my name is Eve Pierpont and I’m the editor for mxdwn’s music feature section. I’m here today with Luke Pritchard from The Kooks. Hi Luke.
Luke Pritchard: Hello. Wonderful to talk to you. I’m very glad to be here. How are you?
mxdwn: You as well. And I am good. How are you?
LP: Really good. Yeah, we’re in [Washington] D.C. today and were in New York last night. We had an amazing gig at this venue called Pier 17, which has kind of blown all our minds because it’s on the top of a building and you play with the backdrop of New York City, so feeling quite grateful today for being musicians and to be able to play in cool places like that. So yeah, we were on fire.
mxdwn: That’s awesome. That sounds really cool. Sounds like a nice venue, and it kind of leads into my first question of how is the tour been going with lovelytheband who you collaborated with on “Jeanie” and what do you look forward to most when touring in America?
LP: Yeah, I mean, it’s been amazing. It’s always great and the last time we came here, we hadn’t been for so long after the quarantine and everything, so we’re kind of rekindling our relationship with the United States. It’s funny because I always feel like it’s a bit of a pilgrimage because the kind of roots of all the music we love came from here. So, it’s always cool to kind of pick up that vibe. Like the other day, me and Hugh played at The Bitter End in New York, which is like a legendary Greenwich Village folk scene place. It’s just stuff you can’t, there’s nowhere like it in the world, you know? And so we feel really good to be back, and yeah, great to be playing with our mates, lovelytheband. We performed “Jeanie” the other night, which was cool and funny because we met them on this tour because we did the song remotely, which is quite funny. So, it’s good to see them in person. Yeah. But it’s been all good vibes so far. Thank you.
mxdwn: That’s good. So, the album was born out of the desire to reconnect to the band’s roots, not necessarily sonically, but its influences. How did that idea shape the creative process behind the album and how did you ensure that identity of The Kooks was harnessed in Never/Know?
LP: Yeah. I mean, I think it was the right time. It is a kind of chapter of the band. We had really evolved a lot and I think with the huge success of our first album, especially in Europe and Australia, a lot of the places, it was such a big album that we almost found ourselves running away from it a bit. I think that’s quite natural, you hear people, especially on your debut when it goes commercially that way. So, we’ve been trying to change our sound and we did a kind of bluesy gospel record and then we did a real synth record. This one was just, I think about doing it ourselves and getting back to the chemistry of the band, a connection between four people in a room leaving the mistakes in there, well, not mistakes, but you know, the happy accidents, all of them, and getting back to guitar music, guitar roots. We just stripped it all really back. I mean, we had a bit of keys, but also the songwriting just kind of guided that. I really wanted to just write in my own head a bit and just write it. I literally wrote a lot of the songs in the basement of my house {laughs}. So it was like the old days for me, rather than bringing other people in and collaborating too much, it was quite an introspective kind of writing process that led itself, well, to a stripped back record. We went to the countryside and we just kind of just got in the room together. No producer. I mean, I produced it myself, but it was just the band doing it all really just fleshing it out and trying to pick up great vibes and I think there’s some. I think we achieved that certainly on some of the songs.
mxdwn: Yeah, definitely achieved that, for sure. And kind of goes into one of my other questions of like, your lyrics have always been so poetic, yet straightforward and seem so effortless. What does your process look like for writing lyrics? And is this something that came naturally or a craft you have worked on to perfect?
LP: That’s very kind. Thank you.
mxdwn: I mean, it’s like, they’re really poetic, but they’re not over metaphorical or anything like that, you know?
LP: Yeah. I like to be direct and simple and I’m a bit of a softer, I’m a romantic really, and this album is certainly that way, inclined. I think it, again, it’s just like trying to, with this new album, it’s just trying to re-connect with the artists that really inspired the band. And that’s what those artists do is trying to find, even going back to Buddy Holly and The Everly Brothers and things like that, that I was really inspired by when I was younger, it’s the beginnings of rock and roll where it really is, you’re not trying to be particularly smart. You’re just trying to be very honest. I think that’s what my writing’s always been about. It’s just to try and be very honest and you’re trying to find potency in a couple of lines that really sum up what you’re talking about, and that can be quite a challenge. And like I say, I just feel like the songwriters I love, that’s what they do. You know, Bob Marley and I mean Sting with The Police and, you know, it’s direct and I aspire to write in that way.
mxdwn: Yeah, definitely. Well, you have it nailed down for sure. So, what inspired the idea to create an album with a title Never/Know, beyond the obvious we never know what’s going to happen. What is the deeper meaning to you?
LP: The deeper meaning, as you’ve said, I’m not about the deeper meaning {laughs}.
mxdwn: If there is one {laughs}.
LP: Yeah. I mean, I think that the kind of essence of all the lyrics on the album is about positivity and grounding and trying to let things happen and trying to be in a kind of flow state and to be grateful for what you have, and I think Never/Know, what it means to me is how you can flip your perspective. That’s something that happened to me big time, is just kind of having, particularly my wife, but having had people come into my life and kind of allow me to flip my perspective on life and how the small things can be very meaningful. And it is about a meet cute, you know, you can meet one person and everything can change or one thing can happen in your life, it could be a domino and you got to be ready to let that happen. So Never/Know is kind of like, you may feel in the worst place in your life, but you don’t know it can be an instant, and all of a sudden you could be driving towards good things. Same in the world in general. Things can shift very quickly, and so that’s the kind of meaning of it. And as you can hear through the record, a lot of the lyrics touch on that got to be ready to let that happen.
mxdwn: Yeah, no, definitely. It’s beautiful and it’s so true, everything you said, you can meet someone, or something, and it is a domino effect, and yeah. I love that. How was it to produce most of the songs on the album yourself, and what was the biggest lesson you learned while doing it?
LP: Yeah, I really enjoyed it. I mean, I know the guys so well and I know how amazing they are, what they’re doing, so for me it was just a matter of giving space for everyone to do what they do best. My main thing was to try and stop all of us overthinking, because I’d felt like we’d gotten a bit into that habit, and so this one was kind of trying to get everyone to not overcook it. So, for example, when we were recording, we would do a couple of takes, three or four takes at most and just sort of go with the instinct. And that was my kind of style with this album was like, to trying to get into that sort of place. But everyone was amazing, you know, because I kind of had this vision for it, everyone really supported it and that made a big difference. So I think, it could have gone another way, but yeah, like it was lovely. We just had fun, we bought a load of amazing old guitar amps, which is fun because we are like guitar nerds, and then you just let the sonic just be, you know, just pop up some mics and record the room. Most of the recording, or the pre-production, the recording was done in a little countryside studio. We had like a, you know, a kettle to boil tea and that was about it. It was very simple. Then we did just one week in a really professional studio, and so that again, just gave us, I think, the impetus to like really get back to the humble roots really, of how we started making music when we were teenagers. Because once you’ve done seven albums, you can record anywhere, you can spend loads of time on it, and we didn’t have that when we were teenagers. You didn’t know what you’re doing and you didn’t have any money and you just kind of have to just do it, and so that was another part of the technique for me was just try and get us back into a debuting mindset of like, just love, just being like kids that are loving making music. That was the battle
mxdwn: That’s very interesting and a very like, unique perspective or way to think of it that I honestly haven’t really heard before. So, I like that a lot.
LP: Great.
mxdwn: Yeah. Where did the decision come from to do a cover of “Arrow Through Me” by Paul McCartney’s Wings? You do it beautifully.
LP: Oh, thank you so much. Yeah, it’s hard, it’s hard to sing. It’s hard to sing. It was like, I mean, other than the fact that it’s an amazing song, and I felt it became a bit of an anthem on tour, and then when we were in the studio, we were listening to the song a lot, and I just had felt how incredibly modern it sounded. And I just thought this could come out now and it would sound fresh. You know? The production, it’s quite jazzy, like it’s quite complex actually, very complex, the structure, even though it doesn’t sound it when you get into it, it’s quite complex and it’s kind of almost got a like jazzy swing thing about it. But I just felt like, I like the idea as well of Wings, weren’t very cool when I grew up, right? It was always the Beatles, the Beatles, the Beatles, Wings are kind of quite cheesy, but I always really liked Wings and I feel like now they’ve become really cool. You know? You hear a lot of Wings in like Tame Impala and like Rex Orange County and Mac DeMarco, all these like, very cool artists, and I thought that was fun. It was like, you know, a bit of a homage to Paul because sometimes Wings don’t get the props that they deserve, I think.
mxdwn: No, it’s so true. It’s very true. And yeah, it has like this groovy, jazzy like feel to it. And I feel like it was a great song for you to cover. It fit really, really well. I don’t know.
LP: Oh, thanks.
mxdwn: The whole aesthetic, I don’t know. It worked so well. “Chinatown” actually reminds me of a Beatles song, especially when it opens. I played it and I was like, whoa, this literally could be like a Beatles record. Tell me the story behind creating and recording it.
LP: Well, that one is entirely live, pretty much.
mxdwn: Oh, wow.
LP: We had these amazing female singers and we had a keyboard guy. So, that’s the one song on the album that we just left to the gods. We just put it out there, which is kind of like, yeah, the Beatles early work was like that. And, yeah, I was doing kind of those very Beatles-y chords, which I love. I mean, the whole albums got a lot of Beatles actually, but that song, I think I just allowed it to be super 60s. I was like, I’m not even going to try and modernize, it just was purely trying to reach that 60s lovely reverb thing. It was just as I wrote the song, how I heard it in my head, and I love it. You’ve got like, the girls sound like angels and like floating above it and, you know, it’s a song. And this song is about forgiveness and acknowledging my own errors, and it’s a sort of goodbye song to a relationship that ended badly, and so I felt like it could have that majesty. I mean it is, in its essence, it’s just pure 60s songwriting, you know? I just didn’t shy away from that at all. I’m just going to go all in.
mxdwn: Yeah, you did, and it worked really well and it is very 60s and I love it. It’s so good.
LP: Thanks so much.
mxdwn: Of course. So, what is the inspiration behind “If They Could Only Know?”
LP: Oh yeah, I love that one. “If They Could Only Know,” a very simple message and I think a lot of people resonate with it, or could like really relate to it, but for me, my gran was very close to me, I grew up a lot with my gran looked after me a lot when my dad died. Also my dad, who died when I was a kid, and specifically, my gran, she died about 10 years ago and I just felt like she’s never really seen me like, you know, figure it out. Do you know what I mean? And I feel like I’m in a good place and a lot of the albums about that kind of journey. That song is specifically like wishing she could see me with my family and my dad could see that. I think a lot of people, I think pretty much anyone in the world, can relate to that. It’s like, there’s certain people that they missed out on seeing you figure it out and you hope that they always knew you would, but you don’t know. So, it’s a longing song in a way.
mxdwn: Yeah. Oh, that’s beautiful. And I’m so sorry to hear that, but yeah, no, I get it. Both my parents passed away somewhat recently, so like I understand.
LP: Oh, I’m so sorry. Oh God.
mxdwn: It’s okay. No, I’m sorry for you too, but I get that. So very relatable song, like you said, it’s like relatable to everybody. Everybody has somebody that they think of like, oh, I wish they could see me now, kind of thing, you know?
LP: Exactly. I also have a song called “See Me Now” {laughs}.
mxdwn: Oh, yes, {laughs}. That’s funny. When you were creating “Talk About It,” were you planning on it being the album’s closing song? Because it fits so well and it leaves listeners in like a dreamy, nostalgic state of mind.
LP: I think the minute we recorded it, I was like, that’s got to be the last song, because it just felt that way. I mean, that song, it was the last one we did in the studio and it was at the posh studio, like the nice studio, and John and Alexis had this little jam thing going on, and I just sat and wrote these lyrics in like five minutes and the lyrics are kind of about a friend who’s going through something and feeling like you can’t help them, that’s the message. When we sat down to do it and record it, and Hugh played the Rhodes, amazing, he just came up with it right then and there, and it feels like a nice, a kind of nice send off. It is positive, but it’s a nice send off to the album, and funny enough, it was the last thing we recorded, the last note we recorded in the session, so that was kind of cool.
mxdwn: Yeah, that is cool. How was it to work with J Lloyd on “Echo Chamber?”
LP: Yeah, amazing. I mean, he’s a friend. We’re mates really. We’ve known each other for a while. We connected because we both worked with a producer called Inflo, and so we shared our stories of working with him, and just one day I was just hanging at his studio, literally just hanging out, and we wrote this song and there was no particular plan to it, and I found it amazing working with him. I think he’s very smart, really dialed in, like just knows his studio, he’s got such a particularly unique sound that he gets, that you obviously hear it on the recording, particularly the outro, and Lydia singing on the bbs. So cool. So it was really good. I think it was a good real 50/50 between what I do and what he does. I think that was really cool. You don’t often get that with collaboration. It’s quite hard, but it somehow sat right in the middle of what we both do, and I think that’s really good. And that’s the only song we ever wrote, you know? We are mainly friends, but I’m sure we’ll do something again, but he is a very, very cool person to work with. I mean, he’s very particular, he makes decisions very well. I like that. He is one of those doers, you know? He doesn’t sit around and he is very quick and I like that. I’m quite like that as well. It just doesn’t like to pontificate. He is just like, let’s get the vibe. If it’s good, great. If not, let’s go to the pub {laughs}, you know?
mxdwn: Yeah, no, I get that {laughs}. That’s awesome. And like you said, I was listening to it compared to like the other songs, like hard, trying to see if you could tell it was produced by both of you versus the songs [produced by] just you, and I came up with the same thing you said, it was like spot on, right in the middle of both of you. Which is very, very interesting and doesn’t always get done. So, that was cool. The album really showcases the range of styles you are able to weave into The Kook’s own sound. What do you think the main contribution is to that accomplishment?
LP: Well, we’ve always tried to put so many genres into the band, and it’s been tricky at times. Especially when we first started with the two original members, like, everyone had such different musical backgrounds, so it was trying to put those into one thing and the songs kind of bind it. It can be tricky, but I think on this one, that’s the thing, I had this vision, very clear vision of like, the exact influences, and I think that helped. It’s just like a few pillars, you know? Buddy Holly, Bob Dylan, The Police, and it’s like, The Kinks and it’s like the Beatles and it’s like, you just stick to these things, and you can duck and weave, you know? But cohesion is really hard. I find it really hard, especially now, and that’s the thing, when we’ve worked in a different way because this one, we did it very old school, and like I talked about chemistry and a band record, but we’ve done records where you are in a studio and you have a producer and you can do anything. It’s like, you can make it sound like anything with a computer. That’s crazy, because you can lose cohesion and direction quite quickly because you just want to, oh great, we’ll go and do prints now, okay, we’ll go and do… And it’s like, you just kind of can get lost in it. So this album, that’s kind of what I was saying at the beginning, kind of come full circle, I was feeling like musically we kind of had lost a bit of that identity, or not lost, but maybe on our way to losing that. So it’s just like bringing it right back. Like what is the band, what we’re about?
mxdwn: Yeah, definitely. It was a great album. I feel like those pillars that you had in mind to do it were all perfectly executed, but also mesh well together too, as in influence. You’re not grabbing a bunch of different artists from like a bunch of different genres, if that makes sense. So, it just worked. It flows really well. Then last question, it has been almost nine years since the hit “Naïve” rocked airwaves. What does that song mean to you now looking back at it?
LP: Certainly rocked the airwaves in the UK.
mxdwn: It did in America too {laughs}.
LP: Well, in the UK it’s almost become like a standard, if you know what I mean. I’m so grateful for that song. It’s just one of those songs the people talk about. It’s a song that changed all our lives.
mxdwn: Yeah.
LP: Moved us to the mainstream. It always astounds me that particular song. People play it in pubs, it’s on karaoke, it’s like, yeah, it’s become a standard in our country. I know it’s played here, but it’s different in the UK. It’s like an anthem and I can’t believe that I wrote it, but I did. And there you go. I mean, of course, you know, regardless of the merits of the actual song, I’m not talking about that, but just the fact that that happened, it’s like zeitgeist. Amazing thing.
mxdwn: Yeah. It just takes one song.
LP: Yeah. One song could change your life.
mxdwn: Yeah. Literally. That song, I think it’s like the way that you sing and the way that it comes in, like your voice comes into it and there’s just certain aspects of that song that just make it so special and like such an anthem. I don’t know. I love that song.
LP: Oh, thank you.
mxdwn: I’ve been a fan for a really long time.
LP: Oh my God.
mxdwn: So interviewing you right now is like, it’s crazy for me.
LP: Oh that’s really sweet. Thank you so much.
mxdwn: Of course, of course. Yeah. But yeah, that’s all I have and thank you so much for the interview and taking the time to talk with me. I really appreciate it
LP: Eve, it’s been an absolute pleasure for me as well. I’ve loved it and thank you so much. Thanks for spreading the word about our new album. Appreciate that. Bye.
