The Kooks - Cherry Bar
Last night at Melbourne’s iconic venue ‘Cherry Bar’ on little Collins street, the English duo of Luke Pritchard and Hugh Harris who make up the Brighton band ‘The Kooks' put on a surprise free, acoustic show.
The Kooks are currently down under for a tour, advertising their new album ‘Never/Know’ which comes out on the 9th of May. At the time of writing they have a show tonight at the Palace Foreshore, Brisbane on the 1st of March, headlining ‘Yours and Owls’ festival in Wollongong on the 2nd (which I am attending and super excited for), Adelaide on the 4th with them finishing the tour over in Perth on the 6th.
The Kooks at Cherry Bar - 26 FEB 2025
It was just a 6-song set last night, playing mostly the hits, starting with ‘Sofa Song’ from their debut album, ‘Inside In / Inside Out’ (2006) which they did a 15 year anniversary tour a couple years ago, where they played at Festival Hall with The Vanns opening for them. After Sofa Song they continued with more songs from said album and played ‘Ooh La’. Before moving onto song number 3, Luke asks the crowd if they want to hear a new song or an old song, to which the crowd decided to sit on the fence and shouted back 'BOTH’ because it would be rude to tell the band at the free show they’ve put on, not to play their new material. So they did, getting the crowd pumped up with the massive hit of ‘She Moves’ and then playing an unreleased song from the new, upcoming album.
At the time of writing they’ve only released the one song from ‘Never/Know’ which is the title track but last night they played what is going to be track number 2, ‘Sunny Baby’. Next they played the title track from ‘Junk of the Heart’ not before finishing the small acoustic set by returning to their debut album and playing their biggest hit ‘Naive’.
There were some minor feedback issues with the microphone that plagued the set but it was never such a problem that it was a huge distraction from the show but the lead singer Luke did have to step away from the microphone a few times while singing.
It was so cool seeing such a large international act at such a small intimate venue such as the Cherry bar. It seems to be a bit of a trend happening at the moment, even with Australian bands with Spacey Jane playing a surprise pop-up show at the Howler earlier this year and also Lime Cordiale did a set of acoustic shows for the release of their most recent album ‘Enough of the Sweet Talk’ both of which I was very lucky to go to.
