Kaiser Chiefs
Employment

THE REVIEW

An unfortunate career for the Kaiser Chiefs: convincing debut, half-disappointing second album, third album offering no hope for the future.

Meanwhile, let's focus on the first (and only album I'll review from the band in question, as it is more interesting), "Employment", released in 2005. The Kaiser Chiefs are a band from Leeds, named after the Kaizer Chiefs, a South African football team where their idol played at the start of his career, Lucas Radebe, captain of Leeds United from '97 to 2001.

The group, led by Ricky Wilson, a wacky singer who's a mix between Damon Albarn and a Robbie Williams under the influence of alcohol, is fun and enjoyable, capable of blending the garage/rock sounds characteristic of these years in Albion with the more synth and LCD SoundSystem-like styles. The Kaiser Chiefs are essentially the Blur in a modern key (listen to Ruby, Modern Way, and Caroline, Yes) to notice the similarity of the Kaiser with the Colchester group), and upon debuting in 2005 with this record, they disappoint no one.

The album opens with "Everyday I Love You Less And Less", a highly appreciable song with a frenetic and engaging rhythm and a decidedly amusing lyric ("Everyday I love you less and less, I can't believe once you and me did sex, it makes me sick to think of you undressed"). After a great, energetic, and convincing start, we move on to the second track, "I Predict A Riot", similar in style and structure to the previous song, Ricky Wilson proves to be a decent singer and the drummer, Nick Hodgson, who wrote all the lyrics, is a good lyricist. After two amazing singles, we transition to a much calmer and more mature song (and perhaps this is a bit of what people expected from them over time), "Modern Way", whose video I find absolutely brilliant. While with Na Na Na Na Naa the album doesn't gain anything except indeed some annoying "Na Na Na Na Naa" emitted by Nick Hodgson (a copycat song to the first two in goal, namely to get you moving), with the subsequent "You Can Have It All" (nice) but especially with the album's emblematic song "Oh My God", the band reaches the highlight of their work: who wouldn't find themselves tapping their feet and shouting along with the singer "Oh my goood I can't believe It!!" outside of any rational framework?

With "Born To Be A Dancer" and "Saturday Night", two songs certainly enjoyable with good rhythm and an incredible energy, the album confirms itself as pleasant and fast in how it harnesses its energy. With the last 4 songs (excluding the nice Caroline, Yes), nothing significant is added to the album, and it closes leaving the listener not entirely satisfied, likely wondering what might happen to a band that churns out 12 nice songs, but all practically the same; indeed, the band will attempt again 2 years later, not convincing the public and critics with "Yours Truly, Angry Mob" (which overall isn’t dreadful) and in 2008 with "Off With Their Heads", in my opinion a complete disaster. Perhaps on Ricky Wilson's group's part, there was too much eagerness to do everything in a short time, hoping to convince everyone they were a prodigy band: unfortunately for the Kaiser Chiefs, they didn't succeed, "Employment" turns out to be a nice record, but it's good to listen to once, twice, maybe thrice... but in the end, it becomes tiring, and when a band starts creating not only all the same songs, but also all the same albums, it starts to exhaust you too. Had they taken a different path from the second album (writing more songs like Modern Way or Love's Not A Competition, But I'm Winning, the latter being on the second album) they might now be better regarded by the global critics and audience.