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Kaiser
Chiefs – Employment
***1/2
Watching the TV coverage of the Glastonbury Festival in 2005,
Kaiser Chiefs seemed to be on all the time. I'm not sure how you get your band to be featured but whatever was done, it certainly
worked as Employment ended the year as one of the biggest selling albums. But is it any good?
Yes it is good though, to
my ears, an inferior more poppy version of Blur circa Park Life without there being a musician as capable of adding something
memorable or distinctive to the more average songs as Graham Coxon frequently did for the Essex four-piece. Indeed, you can
imagine Blur writing and performing most of the songs on Employment which, not surprisingly, shares in Stephen Street the
same producer as Park Life.
Having said this, there are some very good songs on Employment such as the exciting opener
Everyday I Love You Less And Less and I Predict A Riot with its clever, caustic description of the sort of activities which
go on in most town centres every Saturday night. Other highlights include Na Na Na Na Naa with its wiggy guitar solo and the
pleasing melody and sentiment behind You Can Have It All. The equivalent song to Badhead perhaps...
Employment covers a
number of styles though, once again, these are similar forms to those covered by a certain other band. Maybe I'm being a bit
harsh as it is a good album, albeit an over-rated one, though hopefully subsequent Kaiser Chief releases will have influences
deriving from more than one act.
Released: 2005
Acquired
by me: 7.07 (Borrowed from Library)
Keane
– Hopes & Fears
****
Picked on by the inverted
snobs of the music press for being ex-public schoolboys, Keane eventually won millions of fans (and most journalists) over
with this excellent debut album. This was due to such old fashioned virtues as
strong, melodic songs and Tom Chaplin’s superb voice. Hopes & Fears
is full of strong songs and hooklines with highlights including the singles This Is The Last Time, Bedshaped, Somewhere Only
We Know and the chiming piano chords of Everybody’s Changing. Yes, that’s
right, piano chords, for Keane are that very rare beast, a rock band without a guitarist.
The obvious musical reference points are Coldplay’s A Rush Of Blood To The Head and U2 without the pomp whilst
the insecure lyrics are perhaps more akin to Coldplay’s debut album Parachutes.
It takes a while to get used to someone over 10 years my junior singing about not being as young as he used to be but
I’ll get over it!! Hopes & Fears is an excellent, well-crafted indie
pop-rock album and deservedly one of the best sellers of 2004.
Released: 2004
Acquired
by me: Present (for Naomi) 10/04
Kinks
– Ultimate Collection
****1/2
So, is this double CD the ultimate collection
of the brilliant Kinks? Yes, probably – well it’s certainly the best
Kinks compilation on the market with the only real fault being only one track featured from their acknowledged masterpiece
The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society. Not really a problem though
as the Village Green should be bought separately (and guess what, a 3 CD Special Edition has also been brought out by the
same canny label, Sanctuary!), and there is plenty to enjoy in the Ultimate Collection.
The Ultimate Collection contains
all the band’s hits plus key B-sides and album tracks from their 60s heyday right through to the early 80s. This ranges from absolute classics such as Sunny Afternoon, Waterloo Sunset and Days through to under-rated
gems such as the epic Shangri-La and touching God’s Children which on their own justify this compilation being two CDs
rather than a hits-only single disc.
There are a few stinkers, most notably the appalling Apeman and Plastic Man, though
virtually all of the other material here is worthwhile with even the latter tracks sounding OK if rather dated with their
80s gloss.
With a good accompanying essay by David Wells, the Ultimate Collection by The Kinks pretty much is what
it says on the tin. An excellent compilation by one of the key 60s bands and
best acts ever. Buy it – but make sure you buy the Village Green Preservation
Society as well.
Released: 2004
Acquired by me: Bought (30.4.05)
Kinks
– Village Green Preservation Society (Special Deluxe Edition)
*****
In the mid 60s The Kinks
were banned from the United States following an indiscretion or two during a tour there.
This was probably a disaster commercially but a triumph creatively as, without the ban, they wouldn’t have made
such essentially English albums as the Village Green preservation Society, an LP which most people consider to be their masterpiece.
Unlike
many of his musical peers, Ray Davies wasn’t rebelling against his parents but wistfully lamenting the lost innocence
of the past whilst maintaining something of a contemporary musical edge. This
gives the Village Green LP a beautiful melancholy which is heightened by its rich musical palette. Unlike the ragged blues guitar of The Kinks’ early hits, the album features the warm sound of acoustic
guitars, French horns and strings – many of the songs were written on the melotron rather than the guitar.
The album
opens with the brilliant title track, lyrically and musically something of a quiet statement of intent for what is to follow
though the absolute highlight for me is the song Village Green, a beautiful piece of melancholy. When Davies sings, “I miss the village green” the green is a metaphor for the (supposedly)
idyllic innocence of childhood which we can never go back to. This sentiment
is supported by a superb pastoral musical arrangement as are Phenomenal Cat (known in our house as Henry’s song!) and
Sitting By The Riverside, two of my other favourites.
Having picked out my favourites, it should be said that all of the
songs on the original Village Green album are good with excellent melodies, chord changes and arrangements as well as most
of the extras on this Special Deluxe Edition reissue. Maybe the mono version
of the whole LP on disc two is taking completeness a little too far though the extra tracks on this three disc edition include
many gems. I particularly like some of the instrumentals which include both nicely
textured instrumental versions of some of the original LP tracks as well as some
new melodic pieces recorded around the same time as the original album.
The Village Green Preservation Society is The Kinks’
masterpiece and a highly influential album (I’ve noticed riffs and melodies inadvertently borrowed by David Bowie and
Paul Weller). It is a superb album worthily reissued as an even better Deluxe
Edition and deserves the full five star treatment.
Released: 2004 (Original
album released 1968)
Acquired by me: 8.1.05 (Bought)
Kula Shaker - K
***½
Briefly very popular, Kula Shaker's popularity took a massive nosedive a year or so after this debut LP
was released following some very unfortunate comments made by mainman Crispian Mills about the swastika. Their 2nd
LP was a flop and they split up soon afterwards. All of this is quite a shame as K contains some beautiful Floyd-like instrumental
passages, good spiritual lyrics and fine playing. The highlights for me where all of these blend beautifully are two of the
lesser known songs Magic Theatre and Hollow Man (Parts 1 &2). In other songs, Mills' mystical hippy sentiments come across
as rather pretentious at times and the more straight-ahead rock songs like Grateful When You're Dead and Hey Dude are horribly
clichéd in places. Overall the good just outweighs the bad on an album with some outstanding moments.
Released - 1996
Acquired
by me: 31.1.97 - Bought
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