Kaiser Chiefs - Kaiser Chiefs' Easy Eight Album

In the 20 years since Oh My God and I Predict A Riot catapulted them to national attention, Kaiser Chiefs have racked up nine Top 40 singles (five of them Top 10). All their seven albums have also reached the Top 10, an impressive chart run starting with 2005’s three million-selling, seven times platinum debut, Employment and leading up to 2019’s Duck, which landed at No. 3. Along the way, there have been numerous gigantic concerts, not least a hometown mega gig at Leeds United’s Elland Road stadium. Meanwhile, Ricky Wilson has used an array of extra-curricular activities to keep the band as visible as possible. “When we started, barely a week went by without a TV or radio opportunity,” he explains. “We were on TV every Saturday morning! TV doesn’t have those [pop] programmes now, but I realised that there’s a little box in the corner of everyone’s room whether it be a TV or a radio that I can use in another way to sell my wares.” Thus, he’s been everything from being a judge on The Voice to (currently) a Virgin drive time radio DJ with 480,000 daily listeners. All this has helped the band keep highly visible in the mainstream where so many of the peers that came up with them in the 2000s have long since fallen by the wayside. Equally, the years have given the five-piece Kaisers a togetherness that has survived all sorts of ups and downs. As Wilson puts it, “The most rock ’n’ roll thing we’ve ever done is to stay together. I wouldn’t rather be in any other band.”

This is the backdrop for Kaiser Chiefs’ Easy Eighth Album - so titled because it was a joy to make. “Everyone talks about the ‘difficult second album’,” explains the singer, whose band easily cleared that particular hurdle with 2007’s acclaimed Yours Truly, Angry Mob. “I’ve always been fascinated by bands who were allowed to get to their eighth album and then really hit their stride, like Pink Floyd or R.E.M. We decided to make the easiest album we’ve ever made. It took longer than it should have done owing to the global pandemic, but after eight albums it should be easy. You shouldn’t have to struggle to make something good.”

The result is as strong and cohesive a collection of songs as they have made. Kaiser Chiefs’ Easy Eighth Album bears all the time-served Kaisers trademarks (catchy riffs, relatable lyrics and singable choruses) but taking them further into electronics, dance and pop. Created with the help of former Rudimental vocalist/musician Amir Amor and none other than Chic legend Nile Rodgers, the album takes inspiration from a mixture of their classic indie/rock staples and the Eighties pop they grew up with in childhood.

The key influence there are the mid-period Duran Duran of Ordinary World et al. “I was listening to loads of Duran Duran while we were making this album and I love the way they’re somewhere between corny and brilliant,” Wilson enthuses. “They’ve got this facade of a stupid pop band, but when you listen to them you realise that bands like Duran or Wet Wet Wet wrote some absolutely mind-blowing tunes.” The Glaswegians’ 1987 debut, Popped In, Souled Out, is another important reference point. “What I liked about those days is that there were all these basically guitar bands who realised they didn’t have to sound like guitar or rock bands.” Wilson explains. “So they could go off to Memphis and record with classic soul musicians. They did whatever they wanted to do.”

Amir Amor - who is also founder of Major Tom’s studio in London, and whose production and writing credits range from pop colossuses Ed Sheeran and Sam Smith to guitar bands such as Maximo Park and Peace - has also played a big part in the album. As Wilson explains: "Meeting Amir was great because he taught us that some things can be produced within an inch of their lives and some things don’t have to be at all.” Amor, the band’s “housemate for the album”, was brought it at the suggestion of Rodgers, the seminal producer of such pop benchmarks as David Bowie’s Let’s Dance and Duran Duran’s The Reflex along with INXS, Daft Punk et al, who also worked on two tracks. The Chic legend even brought his famous “hitmaker” guitar. “I was asking him loads of questions about all the stuff he’s worked on,” chuckles Wilson. “But when you’re in a room with someone like that, you really have to bring your A game.”

Album opener and third single Feeling Alright comes from those initial Rodgers sessions, and sets the tone for Kaiser Chiefs’ Easy Eighth Album in huge, swaggering funky style. The band’s basic process - all five jamming together until they land on something “that makes you smile” - has been unchanged since the beginning, and this epic dance track is a fine example. “Nile asked ‘Have you got anything?’” the singer explains. “I panicked and played him the jam, he said ‘It’s great’. I came up with some lyrics in 18 hours and two days later we had the finished track.”

The Rodgers sessions also spawned lead single How 2 Dance, a Get Lucky/Suicide Blonde-type funky stomper about liberation on the dance floor, featuring the clever wordplay “I’m going to teach you how to dance like no one’s ever taught you to dance”. As in, “... like no one has ever taught you to dance”, the singer chuckles. Trademark creative use of language also abounds on Beautiful Girl, a lighter, more airy take in the early KC sound which opens with the droll line, “If I was in your shoes they’d probably be too tight.”

The old Kaisers sound is channeled in a different way in Job Centre Shuffle, an anthem about the band’s pre-employment (and Employment!) days, which nods to an earlier generation of Leeds bands such as Gang Of Four. “I wanted it to be verse/ chorus, but more chaotic,” Wilson explains - and if there’s a certain anger in the lyrics it’s because there needs to be, especially when life at the dole face is tougher now than ever. “I’m not a fan of people swearing on records, but I swore [“Why you look so fucked?”] and it really worked.”

Burning In Flames, the album’s epic centrepiece, is a classy, orchestrated, instantly memorable mid-period Duran-type anthem about going out in a blaze of glory which also wryly addresses the “game” of a life on stage, in the public eye and being in a longstanding band. “In any relationship especially a band relationship there’s always someone with an eye on the exit,” the singer explains. “It’s 3am and you think ‘That’s it, I’m definitely leaving.’ But you wake up the next day and everything seems better.”

On Reasons To Stay Alive, which is driven by Simon Rix’s thrusting bass, the band’s sound goes somewhere more electronic, edging towards Personal Jesus-era Depeche Mode territory. Otherwise it’s a “twin” of Job Centre Shuffle and casts a glance at the lives and lifestyles of the ultra fortunate (or ultra-greedy). Sentimental Love Songs is also something Kaiser Chiefs would and indeed could not have written when they started. The glossy pop-rocker came from Wilson’s desire to write a “love song that isn’t corny”, a devotional tribute from a 40something married man and father of two to his better half of many years.

Childhood/youth influences abound on the super-catchy second single, Jealousy, which doesn’t hide its Beautiful South references under a bushel. “I wanted to make a super pop song, but in the mould of Paul Heaton,” Wilson admits. “So there’s lines like ‘All those seven deadly sins/Will heaven let you in?’ I take great pride that we can still make radio ready pop songs in our 40s.” The Strokes - even later tracks such as The Adults Are Talking - remain a key influence. Meanwhile, Noel Groove [“If you’re going to sing along, then come on...”] is a knowing, affectionate nod to, but of course, key early influence Noel Gallagher. It was going to be called Loitering With Intent, but “everybody kept saying it sounded like a Noel groove”.

If all this creativity has got easier, eight albums in, it’s because of the togetherness that has seen the Kaisers through upheavals such as the 2012 departure of drummer/co-founder Nick Hodgson, although hugely able replacement Vijay Mistry has now been in the band longer than his predecessor. Appropriately, the band’s many years together play a big part in the album’s glorious finale, The Lads, an epic anthem about male friendship in childhood and within the band. Near lifelong bonds are touchingly are celebrated in beautiful lyrics such as “We have no idea where were going/But we’ll go there together/From here to forever/We will always be there for our friends.”

“We’ve been together a long time and we’ve been through a lot of stuff,” Wilson concludes. “People see the ups - the ups are great. The downs... you go through those together, not in public”. It’s a fantastic song to end the album on, and as fine as anything they’ve done.

“I always think you should finish a record with a song that you wouldn’t be frightened of being the last song on your last ever record....” He pauses, before quickly adding, “Not that is going to be our last record!” Perish the thought. Roll on the even easier ninth.