Kaiser Chiefs - Yours Truly, Angry Mob (B-Unique)
4/5
By: Alex Lee Thomson
For those of you who haven't got round to buying or downloading (legally of course) the new Chiefs album; firstly, why not? Secondly, go and get it. Go and get it now. Granted, it's not the most life changing of LPs. And yes, despite their pleas to the contrary, it's still jam packed with all the "whoas" and "na, na, na's" that made 'Employment' so frisky and easy to digest, but the Kaiser Chiefs certainly do this in a way so peculiar to anyone else that its presence in your CD rack certainly won't do any harm.
If you gravely despised the first LP, true, this ain't for you. But if like thousands you're still hung up on 'I Predict A Riot', 'Modern Way' and the immortal, 'Na Na Na Na Na', you'll welcome this successor to the mega multi platinum selling debut. Heck, even if you're somewhat still on the fence, it could just sway you over to the world of happy slappy pop rock wonder.
True, you'd struggle to find somebody who could adhere to the outlandish statement that this is truly a landmark record. But what '...Angry Mob' does offer is some classic styled rock 'n' roll, a whole lot of wit, catchy tunes and most importantly, a sense of fun, not riddled by self importance, overindulgence or conceit.
Still talking about goin' out, having a drink and rebelling on mass against something or other in the albums nearly title track, 'The Angry Mob', it's a song that shows how T'Chiefs have changed from the comparative schoolboys that owned the dancehalls in 2005, or further back depending how soon you jumped on the Parva bandwagon. It's an adult, well balanced and generally a well conceived rock song that starts like any other Chief track, that is until the backing vocals crash you into a rather saccharine and seductive chorus that eventually placates to the song's, and possibly the album's, highest peak, the extravagant and pounding chant of, "we are the angry mob / we read the papers every day / we like who we like, we hate who hate / but we're oh so easily swayed". You'd like to consider this an attack on how the media modifies our perception of world events and how we're all drones to what we're told by those in power, but knowing these lads it's probably just a random string of meaningless chants in order to stir the blood to boiling point, which live it certainly does, even more than '...Riot', if we're honest.
Songs like 'When The Heat Dies Down' and 'Ruby' are OK for hard-edged pop songs and sound catchy at first, then forceful, but become cyclic and bothersome a bit too fast to have any lasting effect. The northerners' first album had ones like that, in the shape of 'Oh Caroline' and 'Saturday Night', but what was unexpected about those, and what's hopefully true of this albums lesser tunes, is that although they became irritating and inane early on, after being left to fester as mid album fillers, they turned into unforeseen highlights and live favourites remaining fresh as the heat of the rest of the album died down.
'I Can Do It Without You' is also the kind of mature and well rounded song that wouldn't and couldn't have sounded right on 'Employment' and has a complexity and affluence that you wouldn't ordinarily associate with the Kaisers, becoming more familiar towards the end when beloved oddball Ricky's screeching can be heard in the background uniting this third album with their anthology (counting a rather magnificent Parva release of course).
'My Kind Of Guy' is a tad dark, but features one of only a handful of civilized riffs on the album making it an important stop off point on your way to the reason this album is worth the column inch space, 'Everything Is Average Nowadays'. It's like The Wonders and the Beach Boys teamed up for a comic relief single and given a bizarre array of drugs and instruments and told to "see what happens". It covers in one song everything that's great about the Kaiser Chiefs, from the supremely naïve and swallowing, often unique, vocals and happy-go-lucky drums to the short bursts of guitar and distinct bass lines that hiss at you from a bunker of bubblegum pop and filthy rock 'n' roll.
It's wonderful, but it doesn't make it stand out from 'Employment' in the way that 'Boxing Champ' does do... and really fu**ing well at that. In this short ballad, Ricky finds himself sitting beside Peanut in the most simplistic song they've ever done and singing like, well, a professional. Seriously! His vocals could be Paul Heaton and the song could be the Housemartins, the only bitch being that it's so fabulous you really need more than a minute and a half to benefit from it. This could have easily been a four or five minute escapological forte into the realm of the super-song, but being as short as it is struggles to make an impact as 'Learnt My Lesson Well' comes in and we're right back to Kaiser 101. It's got the same kitsch Beatles-like charm that the whole album does, but after 'Boxing Champ', you just don't worry.
As a whole, 'Yours Truly, Angry Mob' is important for the reason that nobody does this genre of music as well as the Kaiser Chiefs and this is of a much higher standard than their first outing as the collective. It's slightly experimental and fills the gaps that 'Employment' left vacant bringing in harmonious vocals, depth, seriousness and more importantly variety, but hasn't gone too far from the band we know and love. Granted, most of the songs are going to be played to death by radio and telly, but what's great is that after all the propaganda and overplay has died down we think there's still going to be a good compilation of tunes that'll have something of a shelf life. So, good on 'em, and though they might protest otherwise, we'll have one last communal "whoooooaaaaa....", if you please. All together now...?
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