CityLife

Kaiser Chiefs

Manchester Academy

February 17, 2012

 

One music critic described the Kaiser Chiefs as a band who had “fallen off a cliff”, as cruel a verdict as you could deliver. But the forensic evidence proffered at their Manchester gig would suggest that far from having their musical reputation dashed on the rocks, the Leeds rockers have grown a pair… of wings, that is.

The difficult second album is a music cliché, but when you follow it with an underwhelming third and a puzzling fourth, it is easy to see why the Chiefs have been condemned as a band which used up its talent in the seminal Employment LP.

The jaunty hits from that album: Oh My God, I Predict A Riot, Everyday I Love You Less And Less, Modern Way and You Can Have it All – set them out as THE stadium band of the near future.

The next three albums have some good songs and even some jump-about-and-punch-the-air songs.

But they also have a lot of stuff which regresses to Eighties electro-pop, which didn’t fit well with many of the fans who flocked to the crescendoing vocals of Ricky Wilson (right) and the driving punky guitar of Andrew White.

The fans melted away, and from filling the M.E.N. Arena a few years ago, they are now playing the 2,300-capacity Academy.

Which is a shame, because their live act manages to transform their dullest material – The Angry Mob, for instance, goes from repetitive football chant to a bouncing anthem.

But the Chiefs give their fans what they want, and with the inexhaustible Wilson still popping up in the crowd, and pogoing and jack-knifing his way around the stage, they are as charismatic and catchy as ever.

Opening up with Everyday, they had the crowd straight at it, but two songs into the set and there were cries of I Predict a Riot from several punters.

Of course, they got what they came for, plus all the other major hits, and promising new songs: On the Run, Listen To Your Head” and Take My Temperature.

For a band that fell off a cliff, they showed that they can still soar above the ordinary.

 

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