KAISER CHIEFS - The Future Is Medieval

Radiohead set the template, and these days the real contest is over who can come up with the most original and unusual way of selling their music online. Serious contenders for the crown are the now-veteran Kaiser Chiefs, who've survived the ups and downs of British fashion not entirely unscathed, and who, for their fourth album “The Future Is Medieval”, have come up with a genuinely clever idea: offering buyers a package of twenty songs from which to compile their own personalised version of the record (cover art included). Fans can pick up to ten tracks from those available on the band's official website, putting together their own possible assembly of the “The Future Is Medieval” puzzle, which other users can then buy in turn, earning the compiler a pound for every “copy” sold.

Laborious and very English, no doubt. Yet remarkably effective at stirring up some strategic buzz around a name that's grown a bit worn. Which never hurts these days, you'll agree. So we couldn't resist joining the combinatorial fray, and what you see alongside is the tracklist of the “The Future Is Medieval” we put together ourselves.

First off, it has to be said that assembling the album via the band's official website is as quick as it is fun, thanks in part to the clever layout solutions, which give you the illusion of doing something as momentous as choosing tracks and organising a tracklist with great ease and a certain logic. And listening to the final result, if you're into what the band's offering, is far more satisfying than usual, because you really do feel like part of the product you're enjoying. Of course, if the songs themselves weren't up to scratch, the whole idea would fall apart. Luckily for the band (and their audience), Ricky Wilson and co. are in good overall form and consolidate their role as a band that will certainly never change the course of music history, but that knows how to deliver a fresh and engaging brand of revivalism.

In particular, the Kaiser Chiefs seem to have finally realised an old dream: assembling a carousel of spinning pop songs and takeaway jingles into which forty years of British rock can be compressed. It's a bit like opening a Monopoly box (remember the artwork of their first album?), unlocking a little treasure chest of English wonders. Sticking with the example of the album we built ourselves, the Kaiser Chiefs handle with natural ease and melodic flair the codes of pure pub rock on “Problem Solved” and “Dead Or In Serious Trouble”, those of Duran Duran-style synth-pop on “Heard It Breaks” and “Man On Mars”, those of good old britpop on the lead single “Little Shocks” and on “When All Is Quiet”, but also those of the ballad, whether built on acoustic guitar in Kinks-esque style (“If You Will Have Me”) or, with a more modern touch, on the interplay between electric guitar and piano (“Coming Up For Air”).

There's also a clear ability to stray from the main reference point with total spontaneity, as on “Child Of The Jago”, where a classically britpop framework is filtered through a mood as leaden as the grey skies of the great industrial cities of northern England. That same framework, on “Fly On The Wall”, is then given a modern makeover thanks to the keyboards taking centre stage.

The remaining purchasable tracks sit on the same level, both in quality and entertainment value. The epic new wave of “I Dare You” and “My Place Is Here”, both finished with that ever so sly new romantic varnish, the amp-wrecking power-pop of “Long Way Celebrating”, the old merseybeat powder puffs steeped in languid seduction of “Back In December” and “Can't Mind My Own Business”, as well as the decadent glam rock of the excellent “Say Something” or the synth-pop archaeology for old connoisseurs of “Out Of Focus” or “Things Change”: it all works very well and folds back into what is, potentially, an endless exercise in the almost inexhaustible rhetoric of the happy chorus.

What's appealing here, beyond the evident quality of the results (perhaps the band's best since “Employment”, though it's a bit early to say), is without doubt the chameleon-like eclecticism the band has honed over time, a certain natural flair for sonic grandiloquence and, above all, an unshakeable desire to fill every space and shape of every single song with music, at a time when the dominant aesthetic imperatives (so to speak, “anti-waste” ones) would call for a certain minimalism and restrained austerity.

Victorian and lavish like few other bands, the Kaiser Chiefs. And, deep down, it's only right that they should be.

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12/06/2011