Album Review: Kaiser Chiefs, "The Future is Medieval"

Bloody typical! KAISER CHIEFS best album is their poorest selling. 2011’s Future Is Medieval was the band’s fourth album.

Behind the scenes the record company was shitting bricks. Perhaps they were simply worried about too much variety on one disc and the problems this creates in doing the album justice every night in live shows – the main means of promoting sales. After all, the BEATLES would have had a hell of a time recreating Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band live every night, which is why they didn't bother, retiring from touring instead. This album can be likened to Sergeant P as a culmination of creativity, but with perhaps less blatant eclecticism.

When the Chiefs came to record it, they were ready for a change from their usual amped-up, chanty indie rock with irony, and ready to create something more aurally diverse and challenging. In terms of aural amplitude, the canvas is wider; in terms of energy, there are more peaks and valleys, giving the impression of a landscape carved by much greater forces than the blustery wind that blows over a high plateau.

"Kinda Girl You Are" is the kind of rambunctious, snarky song that wouldn't be out of place on any of their other albums, but here, rather than being typical, it is used to set the scene for more transcendent tracks, like the spaced-out yet soaring "Man on Mars" and then the PINK FLOYDish (Syd Barret era) "Child of the Jago," showing a strong understanding of song-on-song album dynamics.

This group of songs comes after the half-way mark, but by that time, we have already experienced a lot, from opener "Little Shocks," which skilfully balances a growly and searing guitar on top of what sounds like a skeleton’s xylophone riff, the reggae/punk to-and-froing of "Long Way from Celebrating," and the BOWIEsque funk of "Things Change" – yes, Tony Visconti was actually in the room when that was put down.

The use of delicate pop, funked and ska-ed rhythms, with rich, rockist flourishes, and a few tricks from Bowie, Eno, and Floyd, gives the band a rich palette to paint from, meaning that things never get boring, even on weaker songs like "Heard It Break" and "Coming Up for Air," which still manage to delight due to their complementary differences.

On this album, the Chiefs finally realized their full potential, so it is sad to see that the following year chief songwriter Nick Hodgson left, pushing the band to revert to a more clichéd, blusterier and chugging version of themselves on follow-up album Education, Education, Education And War, which, however, did better in the charts than this masterpiece.

Grade A

Colin Liddell
2nd October 2015
Revenge of Riff Raff

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!