Ricky Wilson leads Kaiser Chiefs in Liverpool on their Jan/Feb 2015 UK tour (Photo: Gary Mather for Live4ever)
When Live4ever first saw the Kaiser Chiefs it was 2004 at a packed and sweaty (and now closed) Leeds Cockpit.
The effect was like watching a wind-up toy that had been in the hands of a naughty kid; an assortment of flailing limbs and exothermic energy all lashed to a set of pop songs in the grand tradition. Putting aside the warm glow of local lads apparently doing good, it felt objectively like this formula might be enough to get them through a couple of albums, then just maybe splurt the likely lads around Europe in the back of a van once or twice (if they were lucky).
Ten and a bit years later the quintet – minus Nick Hodgson, now replaced by Vijay Mistry – are grinning joyously back at a sold out arena crowd – proof positive that their ability to connect has gone far beyond persuading hard bitten Yorkshiremen to part with their even harder earned brass.
The band had spent Valentine’s day afternoon at nearby Elland Road, savouring the brittle and most would claim non-existent romantic nothings traded between the fans of Leeds United and Millwall. In keeping with modern tradition, the club they adore are now owned by an Italian criminal, but the city whose event horizon they slipped away from via their second album ‘The Angry Mob‘ has managed to remain both parochial and contemporary, a balancing act typified by a still relatively new arena which boasts a design akin to a spaceship.
Later that evening, in football parlance, the lads are looking at an open goal; a crowd every bit as partisan as those in LS11 earlier, a back catalogue of fist thumpers and a profile kept effortlessly high by frontman Ricky Wilson‘s other job as a talent show judge. These ingredients notwithstanding, this is a night that could arguably have been seen as an opportunity for the band to coast the final lap, but instead they give things, as we say around here, “a right old shake”.
It helps that their last album was one of their best. ‘Education, Education, Education & War‘ had a number of qualities, not least of which was being grown up without the requisite loss of piss, a group of songs that railed loudly against politicians, full of that most unfashionable world-view: discrete socialism.
It’s part of a canon that’s nearly always found a way to balance being ear-friendly without sacrificing structure, but the opening quartet of songs are delivered almost like punches. ‘The Factory Gates‘, ‘Everyday I Love You Less and Less‘, ‘Everything Is Average Nowadays‘ and ‘Ruffians On Parade‘ are sped through without any flim-flam. Throughout, Wilson characteristically uses the stage like a set of over extended monkey bars, a frontman who’s learned that to frame his statuesque colleagues he needs to be the fly that they can’t swat.
Kaiser Chiefs live in Liverpool during their Jan/Feb 2015 UK tour (Photo: Gary Mather for Live4ever)
Ironically, the thing that’s changed the least in the last ten years has been the music, a sense of history preserved by still having half of their début ‘Employment‘ in a twenty-strong setlist. Changes have been subtle in a deliberate attempt to keep their audience onside, and tonight the only deviations from the rank-and-file come via the previously soporific ‘Team Mate‘ being delivered as rock n’ roll, plus a version of The Who‘s ‘Pinball Wizard‘ that works hard but never quite convinces. These digressions aside – and Wilson decamping to a plinth of his own at the audience’s rear midway through – the night is mostly a coronation, the likes of ‘Ruby‘, ‘I Predict a Riot‘ and ‘Never Miss a Beat‘ swathing band and crowd in a warm, fuzzy Leodensian glow.
It’s no coincidence that as an event it also bears all the hallmarks of a re-birth. Wilson is at pains to point out that the Chiefs’ first decade will not be their last, a sense of confidence which manifests itself during an encore which begins with a new song, the slightly Cure-esque ‘Falling Awake‘. By now of course, his call and response theatre has won even the most curmudgeonly over, so when perennial closer ‘Oh My God‘s time comes inevitably around the lack of surprise is unimportant, it’s a song that seems tonight to be 99% chorus. It ends with ticker-tape, raptures and two jobs enviably well done: sealing the first chapter, and clearing the way for the next.
The Kaiser Chiefs didn’t send roses, but Leeds still got swept off its feet.
