Kaiser Chiefs are kings of practicality
U.K. pop veterans take lean professionalism into Opera House gig
VANCOUVER— Kaiser Chiefs are old hands at the rock and roll game. It’s been eight years since their debut album exploded onto the world’s radios with its selection of instant sing-along indie anthems. Three albums later they still possess that commitment to catchiness, along with a resolute professionalism regarding the business of making music.
For example, there’s really no need to hire a large meeting room for one-on-one interviews in the downtown Vancouver hotel acting as the band’s temporary HQ. (They play Toronto’s Opera House on April 17.) As bass player Simon Rix, one of the band’s three media spokesmen, answers questions with a measured politeness, he admits that for Kaiser Chiefs (a band called Parva before emerging with a new name, sound and image), efficiency walks hand in hand with inspiration.
“We were all quite old, around 25, when we ended Parva,” recalls Rix. “Once we had our foot in the door the second time around, we’d done loads of gigs and understood how to get people involved. You’ve got to get in people’s faces when you’re a new band. With ‘Na Na Na Na Na’ we knew we needed a fast song for the middle of the set — so we wrote it. We never got round to changing the title.”
Kaiser Chiefs are fully aware that they’ve never generated the kind of following abroad that they enjoy back in their native U.K., where they regularly fill arenas and even a 35,000-seat soccer stadium in their hometown of Leeds. Along with their fellow Yorkshiremen Arctic Monkeys, the band’s lyrical content, awash with British workingclass references and vernacular, means their indie-pop appeal sometimes narrows to a particular brand of Anglophile music fan.
“We shoot ourselves in the foot sometimes,” sighs Rix. “In ‘Never Miss A Beat’ we wrote, ‘What do you want for tea? I want crisps.’ We could have put ‘chips,’ which would have been more internationally acceptable.”
The band took a break for most of 2010, a time when Rix realized “I don’t need to get another job. I’m a musician now.” They returned with what must’ve seemed a novel business idea at the time, samples of 20 songs on their website that fans could use to pick their favourites and create their own bespoke, 12song album, The Future is Medieval. “Was it the right thing to do?” shrugs Rix. “There are definitely some things we’d change if we had the hindsight of experience. But I’m not sure we’d do it again now we’ve done it, do you know what I mean?” If Kaiser Chiefs went slightly awry searching for fresh ways to sell units, creative issues seem wholly resolved at the Vancouver concert, a frenzied blend of new tracks and fan favourites delivered with genuine passion, highlighted by singer Ricky Wilson jumping into the crowd and performing two songs from atop a bar counter. “Of course we want to play new stuff but we try to find the balance,” explains the ever-professional Rix. “If we didn’t play ‘I Predict A Riot’ and ‘Ruby’ and ‘Oh My God’ there would be a lot of disappointed people. We get bored rehearsing those old songs, but when we’re in front of a crowd and people are loving it and jumping around, that’s what makes it exciting and different every night.”