Listen by The Kooks

Listen, the Kooks' fourth album, arrived on 8 September 2014, three years after Junk of the Heart, and the Brighton band had clearly spent the gap rethinking everything. Tony Hoffer, the producer on every record they'd made so far, was out; in came Inflo, with frontman and chief songwriter Luke Pritchard co-producing, and sessions split between Los Angeles and London. New drummer Alexis Nunez, who replaced Paul Garred in 2012, makes his first appearance here.

You can hear the shake-up right away. The bright guitar pop is still underneath, but it's been rewired with jazz touches, gospel uplift and R&B grooves, and singles like "Down", "Around Town", "Bad Habit" and "Forgive & Forget" strut more than they strum. Not everyone followed them there: it entered the UK chart at 16, short of what their earlier albums had led people to expect.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.