There’s no point beating about the bush, but the first time I saw KAISER CHIEFS on MTV I wanted to give the lead singer a hard slap. I don’t normally condone violence but as with grammar exceptions are there to prove the rule. But “why” you cry, “why”? I don’t know: just one of those gut reactions that seem to come from nowhere but take hold nonetheless before you’ve had a chance to rationalise and stem the flow of bile rising from your stomach.
It was the video to ‘I Predict A Riot’ that did it. It is an awful video, a pitifully glossy and faked attempt to make the band look menacing and dangerous on stage while a bunch of extras from Hollyoaks jump about in the audience. As for the song, yeah OK catchy enough but no great shakes, veering as it did towards the cartoon end of rock, helped along by the wet blanket of a video.
So it’s with a certain amount of intractable inevitability that I play ‘Oh My God’, a re-release for these Leeds boys in anticipation of their chart domination in 2005. The ghost of XTC haunts the verse but the chorus is so brazen in its outpourings, like it’s almost trying to parody some Germanic Euro-rock monstrosity from the eighties. Still, despite all my misgivings I’ll admit that it is a decent stab at rock/pop and it just screams “TUNE!” at you so loudly that it’s hard to stay po-faced about it all for too long.
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Not that I’m letting them off the hook completely. It’s all square after two rounds but I’m waiting to see if KAISER CHIEFS have a knock-out blow this year to counter my doubts and reservations or whether they’re just shadow-boxing in the ring of indie-pop.
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