Kasabian - For Crying Out Loud

The Quietus

Like it or not, Kasabian are 2017's biggest British rock band. Each of their last four albums to date has gone to number one, while only they, Arctic Monkeys, and the limper-than-ever Libertines are the only such artists to be part of that ever-slimming rotation of bands considered worthy of whipping crowds of a hundred thousand into appropriate shape as a festival headliner.

And they talk a good game too. Kasabian have always had a certain knack of owning their arrogance, bemoaning the lack of swagger in modern rock while relishing the fact that those who dismiss them as mere lad-rockers are simply ignoring their hidden depths. "It makes your surprising moves more powerful. If people really aren't expecting you to have any depth, when you do something people are like, 'Oh I didn't know they were capable of that'," boasted Serge Pizzorno when interviewed by NME ahead of the release of their latest album, For Crying Out Loud.

What a shame then, that For Crying Out Loud is Kasabian's most predictable record to date, as brash, unsophisticated and just plain dull of a listen as they've ever produced. The band's sixth outing is everything their detractors might expect: ploddingly calculated “anthems”, lyrics that veer between affected confrontation and pure meaninglessness, and an abundance of filler.

I maintain that Kasabian's self-titled first album was actually quite good when it appeared amidst a musical mainstream awash with guitar bands in 2004. Nothing epochal, sure, but there was an authentic sense of strangeness to the group's output, infusions of kraut and psych that, though watered down significantly, lent at least something of an edge to the anchor of straightforward indie-pop that has come to define it since. The likes of 'Test Transmission''s motoric psychedelia and 'U-Boat''s whacked-out sprawl were at the very least interesting, while 'Club Foot', 'Processed Beats' and 'LSF', for example, were among the more passable of the era's abundance of indie disco staples.

Even their last record, 2014's 48:13, had a bit of personality to it. It was an ill-advised idea from the start, from its garish pink cover and minimalist title and track names' brashly misfired attempt at 'iconic' to its frenetic, unfocused songwriting: not a good listen, but there was something at least a little engaging about the sheer self-indulgence of it all.

For Crying Out Loud is notable only for its lack of these limited strengths. It is utterly bereft of personality while what experimental edge they once had has long since faded. While many Kasabian albums have been bad, none have been quite this mind-numbingly boring. Yet the band themselves seem to think that their lack of imagination is in fact a sign of their ability to write a traditional 'classic': "I'd heard Berry Gordy had said if you've not got them in the first four bars then you're finished, so I went in with this old school attitude of song-writing," says Serge.

The reason Kasabian have managed to maintain their mass appeal is not, in fact, because of their songwriting. They've written nothing that shows much nous for a pop single since West Pauper Ryder Lunatic Asylum, released a decade ago. The successive Velociraptor and 48:13 both lacked a hit single like 'Fire', 'Vlad The Impaler' or 'Fast Fuse', but still managed to translate their brash, uncompromising arrogance to their sprawling, directionless sound, regardless of whether the critics cared for it.

Yet For Crying Out Loud lacks the crucial component to Kasabian's swaggering steam train of a career, the swagger. The opener, 'Ill: The King' is the sole exception. A loud, dense stomp of a song over which frontman Tom Meighan brainlessly spits lyrics like "Fetch me a milkshake, don't forget the straw" as he throws down an empty gauntlet to his contemporaries. It's not a very good song, but at least it's cringe-worthingly brash. It makes you feel something, even if that something is a mixture of repulsion and despair.

All the rest of the record makes one feel is pure, unadulterated boredom. It is not even sprawling and directionless but just painstakingly mediocre throughout. There's a satisfying squall to the guitar solo at the end of 'Twentyfourseven', and the hubristic horns that open 'Comeback Kid' are almost refreshingly brash, but on both counts they soon slip back into an unimaginative, affected stomp, bereft of texture and replete with predictability.

'Bless This Acid House' is the record's particular nadir, and the starkest illustration of what's wrong with the new Kasabian album. Shooting for anthemic but landing in some unhappy medium between a limp imitation of Primal Scream's Give Out… and every 'summer anthem' a team of faceless major label songwriters could ever try to conjure. Say what you like about Kasabian but never have they been this pedestrian, predictable, and so utterly, utterly bland.

"I made sure there was no fat on anything, it was going to be classic songs, no self-indulgence, nothing was going on there that shouldn't," continues Serge in the album's press material, forgetting, it seems, that self-indulgence was all Kasabian really had going for them. In mistakenly considering himself capable of a 'classic', he's come out with the kind of material that Kasabian's detractors have always accused them of, but of which they were never really guilty: lad-rock.

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(Columbia Records)

Clearly confident that people were still into chugging indie with a side of glib mental-health references, Kasabian heralded their sixth album with You’re in Love with a Psycho, a track whose dopey asylum-set video simply gurned in the face of progress. It’s not the first time the indie survivors have prized silly blokeyness over appropriate content – in 2009 they released an album called West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum – and to be fair it’s clearly an effective formula: their combination of political incorrectness and easy traceability up the Beatles family tree is partly why their last four albums have all gone to No 1. As grating as their sub-Mighty Boosh wackiness always, always is (crimes against surrealism here include the lyric “sasquatch in a binbag”), their meat-and-two-veg indie is still enjoyable: managing to balance satisfying guitar distortion with all-together-now euphoria (Bless This Acid House), whilst nailing scraggy Sgt Pepper vibes (Put Your Life on It).

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But conversely, I loathe the snobbery constantly directed towards the band. They, along with acts like Courteeners and Catfish & The Bottlemen, take a kicking for having the temerity to not want to be The National. It’s music for football fans, as if the only person that could possibly like any of these bands is just going to rock up in their football top, light a flare, piss in plastic cups and chuck them over the crowd. It’s nonsense, and all of these bands inspire passionate responses at their gigs for a reason.

Now Kasabian do themselves little favours here with an album titled For Crying Out Loud and proclamations of saving guitar music from some perceived abyss. It makes Sergio and Tom sound like they’re down the pub and having a moan about the state of things. And immediately they’ve made switch to the snobbery that I’ve just rallied against. Let’s just get on with telling you whether it’s any good.

‘Ill Ray (The King)’ opens the album on a relatively strong note. It’s exactly the sort of track you’d expect them to use as their strong foot forward and no surprise that they’ve been playing it live on their mini-tour. It fulfills the promise of being guitar-heavy while ticking the usual boxes of swagger and lyrics that make very little sense without actually taking away from the song.

You’ll be familiar with ‘You’re In Love With A Psycho’ which recalls their previous track ‘Where Did All The Love Go?’ in that it features a massive singalong chorus that manages to sound muted at the same time. It’s catchy and features the most Kasabian lyric to date: “Jibber jabber at the bargain booze”.

‘TwentyFourSeven’ is the first sign of filler, and with Kasabian there’s usually quite a bit of filler (that’s okay, some bands are just naturally single bands). This comes across like something Hard-Fi would do with the the backing vocals lifted almost directly from the turgid Suburban Knights. ‘Good Fight’ is equally throwaway.

‘Wasted’ is a bit more interesting. It’s a little bit Dire Straits and details a weekend of drinking (shocking, given the title) but not wearing shorts, kissing in alleyways and music that never dies. Now that all sounds incredibly trite written down but Kasabian have never excelled through lyrics and this is another track designed for the live arena where they can get by on force of personality and perfect pacing.

‘Come Back Kid’ is another we already know and has the sort of lyrics just screaming to be randomly projected onto a screen at Glastonbury. The best include “Big cheese in a bedsit, and shit the sky” along with “Sasquatch in a bin bag”. ‘The Party Never Ends’ is the sort of track that makes you want the party to end. There is a nice trumpet solo towards the end, though.

The stuff that they’ve always done best for me is the stuff that feels a little like a dance track. So ‘Are You Looking For Action?’ actually serves as a highlight in the second half the record. Although it is somewhat telegraphed by actually featuring the word bass line in the chorus but subtlety is not what we’re here for. That makes ‘All Through The Night’, a song written in the style of a ballad, somewhat unnecessary. Lyrics of “call my name (all through the night)” and “she could always make the bed bugs bite” are probably meant to be sexy but just highlight that this type of track isn’t their strong point.

I listened to the album a lot building up to the review and I still don’t remember 'Sixteen Blocks' exists when it comes round. Luckily ‘Bless This Acid House’ is the best track on the album, despite the name making you wince. It’s comfortably the catchiest thing here too, sounds a bit like ‘C’est La Vie’ by Stereophonics, which itself sounded quite a lot like Bowie. It’s the one that should hang around setlists for years to come.

The album closes with ‘Put Your Life On it’, which recalls a little bit of Blur in its soulful acousticness but, like most of their quieter material, it fails to move you. And then we’re done and reminded once again that Kasabian are a band that doesn’t produce great albums.

I suppose the question is whether having only a handful of strong tracks (by your own standards) on a record is enough. For Kasabian, I think it is. There’s enough here to mix up their setlist without weakening it. The force of personality from Tom and Sergio is enough to keep them afloat despite hardly being the most creative band out there. Sometimes it’s enough as long as you’re keeping the fanbase happy, especially when they’re more casual as a listener.

But that’s a critique of Kasabian as a whole and not this album. If this was the album to save guitar music from the abyss, then we might as well nudge it over the edge. Luckily it never needed saving and that was just a soundbite for an interview. The result with For Crying Out Loud is that it has bright moments but ultimately adds to the collection of below-par efforts that will do little to extinguish the elitism scorn that they attract.