As we approach the 20th anniversary of their debut album, skinny-trousered indie rock types the Kooks have found a whole new audience. Having been rediscovered by the TikTok generation, early hit Naive is powering towards a billion streams, recent album Never/Know returned the band to the Top 10, and they’re now playing the biggest shows of their career. In Manchester tonight, 18,000 mostly teens and early twentysomethings hurl plastic glasses in the air or climb on each other’s shoulders, generating an atmosphere of joyous celebration before the band have played a note.
It would take a truly disastrous performance to lose in this environment, but instead, thousands of voices turn hits such as Eddie’s Gun or She Moves In Her Own Way into epic, euphoric singalongs, while even the slighter tracks have a new robustness. The Kooks’ were never as feted as the Strokes or the Libertines, but haven’t been hampered by boredom or health issues, and play as if they’re still loving every minute. It’s the day after the Manchester synagogue attack, and frontman Luke Pritchard sets off a wave of cheering when he talks of “throwing a bubble around the arena and it’s all peace and love”.
Although most of the 26-song setlist is trademark indie/60s beat pop/rock’n’roll, there are various curveballs, including what Pritchard not inappropriately calls “the disco section”. Then one young lad holding up a sign asking to play Seaside finds himself being hauled on stage to accompany the singer on acoustic guitar. Pritchard shifts to piano for 2014’s See Me Now, about his father, who died when he was three. The 40-year old explains that they’re performing the song again because he’s a father now himself, and asks the audience to help if he “chokes up”. When the crowd light up the arena with their phones, it’s unusually raw and touching.
Voices and guitars swell loudest for Ooh La and a triumphant Naive. A song that they once came close to scrapping has become the bedrock of the band’s unlikely Indian summer, and is sung to the rafters.
• At the Brighton Centre, 5 October, then touring.
