Off With Their Heads – Kaiser Chiefs

Year Released: 2008

Label: B-Unique

Year Bought: 2010

Kaiser Chiefs were one of those 00s bands that threatened to be around forever but faded away.

The first album was great, the second album had some great songs on it, but by the third album... it felt like the music world had moved on.

There seemed to be a few bands that happened to – Athlete, Maximo Park, Bloc Party, Razorlight all spring to mind as having a good couple of albums but then just stopped being relevant.

'Off With Their Heads' was trailed by the single 'Never Miss A Beat', which has some suitably Kaiser Chief-lines about eating crisps for your dinner and bunking off school, and it's probably the best song on the album.

Opening track 'Spanish Metal' sounds a bit space rock and you prepare yourself for a record that will take some interesting turns but it never really manages it.

Kaiser Chiefs are essentially a party band, and much of the record leans into their fusion of Blur, Madness and XTC. At times the keyboard-heavy sound and vocal melodies make them practically indistinguishable from Maximo Park, but without the overtly, sometimes uncomfortably, confessional lyrics.

'Good Days Bad Days' sounds like 'Five Little Speckled Frogs' crossed with 'Ob La Di Ob La Da', while 'Half The Truth' does that thing of saying seemingly random words all on the same note like one of the crimps from the Mighty Boosh:

Secret more
Getting it together
With a big fat bowl
Of alphabet spaghetti
Watch the birdie
Looking through the mirror
Polly wanna cracker
That's not what I heard

None of it has the same sense of power that 'Oh My God' or 'I Predict A Riot' delivered, or even the sheer give-a-fuckness of 'The Angry Mob'.

5/10

Comments

Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand

Year Released: 2004 Label: Domino Year Bought: 2004 January 2004. I'd just quit uni. Was back at the family home in Bishop's Stortford. The place I'd been so desperate to get away from, and I was back and already bored. And then things got a bit less boring. I remember this so clearly. I was having a shower and the radio was on, and on came 'Take Me Out'. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. At first I thought it must be an old tune that had passed me by, but no, it was announced as a new song by a band called Franz Ferdinand. It sounded glorious. It sounded interesting. After the staleness of the post-Britpop years, and beigeness of Coldplay, Travis et al, there was actually a British band doing something interesting. I loved it, and when the album came out the next month, I gobbled it up with glee. Listening back now, and I still love it. The hushed opening of 'Jacqueline', the sleaze of 'The Dark of the Matinee', the homoeroticism of 'M...

The Bends - Radiohead

Year Released: 1995 Label: Parlophone Year Bought: 2000 Some records I'm going back to for the first time in a while. Others, like 'The Bends', are still in my regular rotation. What to say about this album? The crashing piano chords of opening track 'Planet Telex' give an immediate indication that this is not the same band that made 'Pablo Honey'. The album is a quantum leap from that record, which – while it has its fans, including me – is by-and-large the sound of just another guitar band. 'The Bends' is different. From the slowing-down-time intro of the title track, to the how-high-can-you-go guitars on 'Just', the album constantly delights. 'Fake Plastic Trees' is a magisterial effort, while 'Black Star' contains one of the great opening lines: "I get home from work and you're still standing in your dressing gown, well, what am I to do?" The recording process for this record was inspired by seeing Jeff Buck...

NME Awards 2004 - Various Artists

Released: 2004 Label: NME When I bought: 2004 In ye olde days before streaming, and even YouTube, it wasn't possible to hear within a matter of moments pretty much every song ever released. Therefore, compilations like this by the NME actually had a degree of value. Take 'Paperbag Writer' by Radiohead, a b-side from 'There There', the lead single from 2003's Hail to the Thief. I bought the album but not the single, so I'd never heard this tune. It's a brilliant track, with its electronic shuffle beat and muffled vocals making it sound like a left over from Kid A, or the starting point for Thom Yorke's debut solo album which would be released the following year. Likewise, 'See You Soon' by Coldplay. A true delight from a 1999 EP, with delicate guitar playing, scarce production, and honest vocal delivery. It's a reminder that once upon a time Chris Martin et al were able to operate with that oft-neglected trait: restraint. As a snapshot o...

All The Records I've Ever Owned

Search This Blog