The Little Kicks first emerged around five years ago, a young Aberdeen band with the wind in their sails. A crisp, upbeat debut album followed, laced with off-kilter indie pop worthy of comparison to early Franz Ferdinand, The Long Blondes, or even Sparks. Then, the band took some time off to reassess, re-jig their personnel, and are now ready to stake their return... With recent single You & Someone Like Me under their belts – complete with intricate motion capture video – The Little Kicks now officially announce that their long-awaited follow-up album Shake Off Your Troubles will be released on March 3rd through the band’s own Loosen Up Records. The second single to be taken from the album, Goodbye Enemies, Hello Friends, will also see a release before the year is out, on December 2nd.
Goodbye Enemies, Hello Friends has a terrific retro feel with ghostly harmonies, uplifting melodies and is a delightful venture into alt-pop.
Through 2016’s political upheavals, and the loss of many a music icon, it’s been a year that many will be keen to see the back of, so it is perhaps with some foresight that The Little Kicks choose to name their 2017 album Shake Off Your Troubles. New single Goodbye Enemies, Hello Friends is in itself a nod to appreciating what you have in life, as singer Steven Milne elaborates; “Lyrically this was the first song I wrote for the new album so it was the starting point and template for our new record in many ways. It's generally a song about being happy with your lot and appreciating what you have, and not letting anything get you down or get the better of you. The overall sentiment is that things are going to be okay. This is echoed and in line with the title of our new record "Shake Off Your Troubles". There is a totally intentional Beatles vibe which you could say comes largely due to the name-check (and drum fill) in the last verse but I feel their influence was a natural reference point in the studio that suited the song. The simplicity of having a heavy backbeat with melody moving on top and the drums not really changing is solid Ringo Starr. Of all the genres they covered they never really flirted with disco - so the brief sort of became “what if the Beatles went disco?” “The video for this song was filmed in a studio earlier this year. Initially the plan was to film green screen imagery with us in front but we felt that the simplicity of the song and its pretty constant narrative throughout meant it perhaps lent itself more to a performance to camera. It was important that the sense of fun heard in the music was reflected in the video and ultimately agreed that the best thing for the song would be that we keep things pretty simple and make it a contrast to the last video.” www.thelittlekicks.co.uk www.facebook.com/thelittlekicks www.twitter.com/theLittleKicks