Professional ratings
Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Metacritic	60/100
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Digital Spy
Drowned in Sound	(2/10)
The Independent
NME	(5/10)
The Daily Telegraph
The Guardian
The Observer

Listen is the fourth studio album by British rock band The Kooks. It was released on 8 September 2014 through Universal. It is the band's first album to feature new drummer Alexis Nunez who joined in 2012, replacing Paul Garred. The album was preceded by singles "Down", "Around Town", "Bad Habit" and "Forgive & Forget".

Stylistically, the album differs from the band's previous work as elements of jazz, gospel, and R&B were added into the music. This album also marks the first time Tony Hoffer did not produce the band's work. Instead production was handled by Inflo, Luke Pritchard and Fraser T Smith.

Listen is the band's first album in three years, with Junk of the Heart being released in September 2011. The album was recorded in Los Angeles and London.

Upon its release, Listen debuted at No. 16 on the UK Albums Chart and failed to meet the commercial expectations set forth by the band's previous work.

"With this record we didn't do any rehearsing beforehand. I'd write a song with Inflo or on my own, put it up and we'd all play over it. There was a real freedom to the process," said the band's frontman Luke Pritchard. "To me this album is about pure expression. Even the way we made the album felt fresh. Rather than us just being a band in a room, playing our guitars with the vocal over the top, which is what we'd always done before, we were really listening to what was going on around us, picking up ideas. The whole thing was much more natural."

Pritchard found Inflo, a 25-year-old London-based hip hop producer via Soundcloud. “I had written 'Around Town' and I thought maybe for the beat I might want to bring in someone from hip hop" said Pritchard. The two artists were both looking to work with someone new and "looking to get out of the bullshit" of the music industry. "Forgive and Forget" was the first song they wrote together. Pritchard has described Inflo as a “a young Quincy Jones."

Pritchard has explained that "Westside" is a track about his two best friends getting married and "Forgive and Forget" is a story of a couple breaking up in a bar. The track "It Was London" is a song about the London Riots; "A big city like that, London, Paris, you have this illusion that everything's safe, and that sort of thing happens and the walls come crashing down. The police brutality that happened around that time… we wrote a song about that," Pritchard stated. Pritchard has said that "It Was London" is one of his favorite songs on the album.

...
Wikipedia