Kasabian’s long-standing alignment with the Gallagher brothers has been both the making and the ruin of them. It seems that, try as they might, their name cannot be mentioned in a sentence devoid of ‘Oasis’ and ‘lad rock’ utterances. Unfortunately for them, the critics’ disdain towards the original mad fer it Mancs has pushed them into a corner so tight that they’ve had to rabbit punch their way out of it.
West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum sees them break free of the stoic grey area that their ‘difficult second album’, Empire, left them in. “The third record is the one you’re judged on” declared Serge Pizzorno, the band’s guitarist, keyboard player, songwriter and lynchpin. Perhaps it was under the weight of this knowledge, then, that the band decided to draft in whiz kid producer and Gorillaz co-creator, Dan the Automator. What Dan’s done here, it seems, is channel the indiscriminate mass of raw ideas that Kasabian have brought to West Ryder into an actual coherent album. The Kinks-esque psychedelica of Thick as Thieves and West Ryder/Silver Bullet flow from the eastern strings of Where Did All the Love Go? via the Krautrock-tinged Swarfiga’with the cocksure confidence that their self-titled debut delivered. Despite being a more experimental and perhaps softer record, there are still plenty of examples of Kasabian at their original and swaggering best here. The big, brash beats of album opener Underdog and first two singles, Vlad the Impaler’and Fire, will satisfy any yearning for the heavy bassline / looping groove days of LSF or Processed Beats.
Ok, so Tom Meighan’s voice probably wouldn’t even get him through to the second round of the X Factor, but who the hell wants more generic crooners who can belt out yet another flawless rendition of You Are Not Alone? In a musical era of avant-garde minimalism, 80s nostalgia, and production-line pop your average hardworking bunch-of-lads-in-a-band get a raw deal. West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum is as mental, raw and sketchy as its name suggests. It’s also probably one of the best albums you’re likely to hear this year.
