Chiefs nice and Easy..

‘NILE’S TO BLAME’

KAISER Chiefs reckon their new album is their Greatest Hits, although fans haven’t heard it ... yet.

The band reached that stage in their career where a Hits collection was being mooted, so they entered the studio to add a couple of new tracks, but then things snowballed.

The end result is their amusingly titled Easy Eighth Album and bassist Simon Rix told me: “I call this the greatest hits of Kaiser Chiefs.

“One of the reasons we didn’t do a proper Greatest Hits is that doesn’t exist, it’s just a playlist now. It didn’t feel like a product that wasn’t already there.

“The new album sounds like traditional Chiefs sound and our later stuff, plus more pop and some completely different bits.”

There’s a little post-disco swagger on the record too courtesy of Nile Rodgers on Feeling Alright.

“Nile was super important,” confirmed Simon. “We started making this one with him during Covid, one and a half songs was the start, but then he introduced us to (ex-Rudimental man) Amir (Amor) to take over and he ended up producing. Then he said we should do more songs, so then we did an album, so it’s Nile’s fault/inspiration. We gave the decision making to someone else this time.”

The LP title suggests the recording process was a breeze but there’s a deeper meaning: “It’s partly Easy Eighth because there’s jeopardy on your first and second albums, it could all disappear. By the eighth there’s a little less stress. You can try different things as we did on our sixth album which was more poppy. If it works it works, if it doesn’t we carry on.

“People are always gonna turn up see us play Riot and Ruby and all that stuff, why not try and do whatever you want to do?”

Incredibly it’s 20 years since Kaiser Chiefs first emerged as part of a scene that included The Killers and raft of guitar bands with bigger ideas.

Simon would love to revisit that time: “For me one of the momentous tours we have ever done was the NME tour with Futureheads, Bloc Party and The Killers back in 2005 – I would love to get that bill together again.”

Speaking of The Killers, Simon loves how the Las Vegas rockers have evolved: “They have loads of members in their band now, other people expand the band. We just stuck to the five never changing.”