I predict a riot of fun as Kaiser Chiefs keep up the pace
KAISER CHIEFS: Duck (Polydor) Verdict: Indie-pop success ★★★★✩ LYKKE LI: Still Sad Still Sexy (RCA) Verdict: Soulful revamp ★★★✩✩
BaCK when boisterous boys in skinny ties and drainpipe trousers were setting the pop agenda, the Kaiser Chiefs were among the flagbearers of the last meaningful wave of British guitar music.
the Yorkshire quintet rose alongside Franz Ferdinand and razorlight and their colourful, catchy tunes brought them massive success. Brit-winning 2005 debut album employment sold three million. I Predict a riot was a top-ten single and 2007’s ruby went to No 1.
With the charts now the preserve of rappers, electro-pop hopefuls and solo strummers, the band’s raucous indie-rock has fallen from grace. the only problem is that nobody has told singer ricky Wilson and the gang.
they go a little under the radar these days. But, with their profile boosted by Wilson’s stint as a judge on the Voice, they remain a significant live attraction.
Superficially, seventh album Duck sticks to arena-ready basics. Producer Ben allen, who worked with the band on 2014’s education, education, education & War, has built a wall of sound by meshing andrew ‘Whitey’ White’s guitar and Nick ‘Peanut’ Baines’s keyboards.
PeoPle Know how to love one another has been touted as an antidote to 2005’s everyday I love You less and less, and its northern soul beats set an upbeat tone with a plea for national unity.
Under the swashbuckling surface, a more nuanced approach seeps through. the band’s U.S. producer, a native of athens, Georgia, made his name in southern hip-hop circles — he worked on Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy — and he adds a cinematic edge.
Wilson, 41, is also emerging from the shadow of original songwriter Nick hodgson, a drummer who left the group in 2012, and his lyrics here are his most personal to date, tackling male broodiness on Golden oldie and self-esteem
issues on the breezy Wait. Wilson’s sharp, observational humour is also intact. target Market is the tale of a best man who makes his wedding speech with one eye on ‘the bridesmaid at table three’.
Kurt Vs. Frasier salutes Seattle by celebrating two of the city’s most famous exports, tV sitcom Frasier and the grunge scene that spawned Kurt Cobain’s Nirvana. It’s a bracing finale to an album that successfully tweaks a well-established blueprint. on this evidence, the hardened indie-pop survivors aren’t going to go gently.
n lI lYKKe ZaChrISSoN has reinvigorated herself. the Swedish singer-songwriter, known as lykke li, was a key player on Mark ronson’s excellent late Night Feelings album — she even came up with the title — and next month sees her curate her own all-female festival in la, promising ‘strong women, strong drink’.
She is also revisiting, and improving on, last year’s mildly disappointing So Sad So Sexy album, reworking four tracks and adding two new numbers to give the project a more soulful, more fulfilling edge on her six-song eP Still Sad Still Sexy.
Zachrisson, 33, who has a three-year-old son with producer Jeff Bhasker, has moved on from the bouncy pop of 2011’s I Follow rivers and her growing maturity is now fully to the fore.
two Nights has been rejigged with more prominent dance beats by producer Skrillex, but the most dramatic upgrades arrive on the original title track and the melodramatic Deep end, both now piano ballads packing real emotional punch.
n Both albums are out today. Kaiser Chiefs follow festival dates by starting a UK tour at the Bonus Arena, hull, on January 21 (kaiserchiefs.com).