Kaiser Chiefs – Employment @ Amazon.co.uk
I’m at a loss. If this is one of the ‘bands of the year’ then 2005 is going to be pretty lean and full of bands that sound like they’ve been around for ages. Super Furry Animals is the easy comparison, and whilst the leap to the Kinks isn’t too far in terms of style, it’s an unreachable level in terms of substance. This isn’t a bad album at all, far from it, but it does sound like I’ve heard a lot of it before. Thoughts of Interpol, Radio 4, British Sea Power, and back to bands like Space and the “Furries”, all flood my head
As I said it’s not a bad album, stand out tracks include the single “I predict a riot”, “Saturday Night” and “Oh My God” the latter adding a sprinkling of Supergrass…. and that’s where I have to concede that I’m maybe not giving this album a fair chance. A couple of re-listens later and it starts to worm it’s way under the skin, not too deep mind you but deep enough that the track order is memorised and you know when to skip a track, something I find myself doing less and less.
And then I re-read what I’ve written above, consider the album from a new perspective and realise I was right all along. It’s NOT a bad album, it has some nice songs on it with severa,l if not all, being perfectably listenable. But it lacks one thing, emotion. I just never get the feeling that they are fully committing to their songs and if that sounds like some arty-farty way of saying they sound “lazy” then… well.. yeah I guess they do. The problem this brings is that it makes the songs forgettable. Too many other songs exist that sound like, and better, than those the Kaiser Chiefs have offered.