Know what Ya Doing, Doing To Me? (Yours Truly, Angry Mob - Kaiser Chiefs)

Member Name: Andy.mack

Product:	Yours Truly, Angry Mob - Kaiser Chiefs
Date:	29/03/07 (144 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Some really good, catchy pop songs

Disadvantages: There still seems to be a lot of filler tracks

The Kaiser Chiefs seemed to enjoy immediate success when they unleashed Employment on the world back in 2005. You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing Ricky’s vocals belting out of a speaker. For me though, the first album was a bit of a split bag. I found that the album was very much made up of the hits that were played to death on the radio and the rest was really all fillers. So with slight trepidation I bought the new album a few weeks ago on the hope that it would be a little better. It is two years later and I had hoped that the quality of the album would have improved.

For the most part the quality of the album as a whole has improved there are certainly a lot less fillers from the Leeds band. The follow up album was recorded in Hook End Studios in Berkshire, under the watchful eye of Stephen Street, who has previously worked with The Charlatans, Blur and The Smiths. Under his watchful eye they came up with 22 tracks that were eventually whittled down to just 13 to make the final album. Despite this there does still seem to be some very average tracks and you can’t help feeling this album should have been so much better.

Of course it was going to be hard for them, the second album always is for new bands, especially when the first album is hyped to such proportions,. What struck me most about this second release from the Kaiser’s though was that it didn’t sound any more mature musically or lyrically than its predecessor. A lot of bands who tour for two years seem to pick up bits and pieces and alter their style a little. The Kaiser’s seem to have stuck to safe ground and this album in parts sounds just like Employment.

The bands sound doesn’t seem to have changed much. They still have the same quite simple Indie sound that the first album had in abundance. There are a few tracks where the guitars really take the lead and they sound like the sort of songs that the band are capable with. There is a nice cohesion between the guitars, drums and base throughout the album and that perhaps is why this album sounds a little better than the last. There are though a couple of tracks that really feel like they’ve been thrown together musically and really disrupt the flow of the album.

Likewise I felt that Ricky’s vocals seem to be stuck in a bit of a time warp. His voice still sounds exactly the same as the previous album and although the lyrics have improved quite a bit his vocals still seem to be quite hit and miss throughout the album. On tracks like “Everything Is Average Nowadays” it’s almost ironic that Ricky should be making such a bold statement. It is a track that is very easy to listen to but as far as musical ability and improvement on quite an average album the second one just seems to fall short.

It is what it says on the tin. The Kaiser Chiefs are still trying to make Indie Pop and the two sounds while they work in small doses seem to be missing drastically from parts of this album. There are a couple of decent tracks, such as lead single Ruby, which has really grown on me since I first heard it on the radio. It has a good tempo and is an easy song to get into and enjoy. The other that really caught my attention was “Highroyds”. It’s a very well written track with a decent guitar beat and its one of those songs that seems to really get your attention and have you singing along.

On the flip side though the album does seem to be made up of fillers, no matter how you try to disguise them. The 1 minute 31 second long Boxing Champ is the perfect example. It’s a very slow ballad that sounds so out of place. The lyrics are appalling and Ricky’s vocals sound so stretched that it makes it almost a pain to actually listen to it. Another track that has really stood out for me as one of the poorer efforts on the album is “My Kind Of Guy”. It’s not actually that bad a song but the tempo and the vocals just make it sound like they can’t be bothered and again it seems like purely a track to fill up some CD space.

So is Yours Truly, Angry Mob a better album than the predecessor Employment? Well in my opinion it is, but then I never really had that high an opinion of Employment in the first place. Like the first album there are some very good tracks on this album but once again they have let themselves down with far too many fillers that just don’t work. If they had 22 tracks and these were the best 13 then there really must have been some poor tracks in those remaining 9. For Kaiser Chiefs fans you’ll love this album, if like me you like the singles or had the same opinion of the first album I’d recommend sticking to listening to them on the radio.

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Summary: The Second album from Leeds based Kaiser Chiefs