Live Review: The Kooks, Sloan Peterson

Only six days into 2019 and Brisbane becomes home to The Kooks for the night; talk about starting the year on a high.

Sloan Peterson joins us to begin the night. Joannah Jackson fronts the band, showing tremendous grace on stage. Polite and warm in performance, the entire experience of Sloan Peterson has been pleasant. What resonates the most from their set is Jackson’s voice, as it brings a sense of nostalgia. After a short and sweet half hour, the band says goodbye and closes their set to ready for our main event.

The Grand Ballroom at Eatons Hill Hotel has housed some great names from around the world, and The Kooks is skyrocketing to the top of that list. Every other soul in sight is eager for the night ahead. It’s the last show of the Australian tour for The Kooks, and we want to send them off in style. 

Eddie's Gun and All The Time are used to open the set and frontman Luke Pritchard is a true rockstar. Under an array of coloured lights, The Kooks deliver flawless performances of musicality, sensuality and euphoria.

She Moves In Her Own Way, Junk Of The Heart (Happy) and Sweet Emotion are just some of the classic kooky songs that built a heartwarming set.

The crowd are young, old and in between, all excited but not giving the band a lot of energy to bounce off. Usually, Pritchard  clears his throat and the crowd goes wild, but tonight we lacked a certain vocality in our fandom. Truthfully, it took until the final three songs, as an encore, for the crowd to really get to where they should have been earlier. We end the night with that excitement, nostalgia and warmth with The Kooks playing out their set on Naive.

The Kooks can do no wrong. They’re musicians to the core, brilliant in their performance an all together superstars. The show was good, but The Kooks deserve great. The venue limited the crowd, who failed to fully immerse themselves in the set. It wasn’t what the band lacked, it wasn’t how appreciated The Kooks are, it was the atmosphere and space. Despite this, The Kooks showed us how good they are.