The Kaisers are Back

Hello! It's been a while since I posted on here... over six months in fact... but now it's time over summer for me to kick start my blog posting again on the world of music, and I'm going to kick off with a look at the Kaisers Chiefs recent novel way of releasing their album.

Instead of buying a traditional 13-track or whatever album you can head over to http://www.kaiserchiefs.com/ and create your own album, taking 10 of the 20 tracks, of which you can hear a 30-second sample of each, ordering them as you wish and creating a front cover for it from a selection of images which you can rotate and zoom in on etc. Then all you need to do is pay £7.50 and you get your own custom downloadable album, complete with correct formatting of track order. Oh, and of course collections can buy all 20 tracks (for another payment of £7.50 of course!)

So is this the future of albums? Although downloads are now the more prevalent way of getting songs now I still prefer buying albums as a whole pre-packaged in the way the artist wanted the album to sound, preferring to save downloads for singles. However, the opportunity to get hold of far more tracks than you would on a normal album plus have the God-like ability to order them is great, even if it was frustrating that it's difficult to know how songs can flow with just 30-second versions. However, I think it's a novel idea and one that definitely gets the Kaiser Chiefs some good publicity after a few years in the wilderness.

However, this idea is still not good enough to mean they're not going to release a proper CD copy because they are later in the month.

But what tracks did I pick?

1. Problem Solved
2. Can't Mind My Own Business
3. Little Shocks
4. Saying Something
5. Out of Focus
6. Child of the Jago
7. Heard It Break
8. Man on Mars
9. Coming Up For Air
10. Starts with Nothing

Probably the best track in the 20-song collection starts of the album: classic up-tempo Kaisers with a great beat and singable lyrics. 'Can't Mind My Own Business', though a close cousin to 'Can't Say What I Mean' is another strong track to continue and is once more their typical poppy track. It's third track and lead single 'Little Shocks' that is a change of pace for the band with a much more experimental, almost ethereal, ditty that seems very off-the-wall on first lesson but the chorus soon hooks into your head.

'Saying Something' is a mixed-up track and a little break before getting onto a three-pronged musical attack. 'Out of Focus' is another ethereal track but lodges into your head well with the chorus; 'Child of the Jago' is another one of the standout tracks, including the album title in its lyrics, and takes 'Love's Not A Competition (But I'm Winning)' and 'The Angry Mob', mixes them up, and kicks in a bit of attitude, and 'Heard It Break', definitely in the top three of their selection with a Caribbean steel-drum feel and some touching lyrics.

'Man on Mars' takes a bit to get going and its the music that definitely makes it. 'Coming Up For Air' is almost a perfect closure to an album with some beautiful piano and instruments and some heartfelt lyrics, and deems to be a live lighters-out song, which I hope they play when they come to Leeds in September.

The track I chose to close is in fact 'Starts with Nothing' which does also have an album-ending feel with a theme of death which, though it is a slower song, doesn't mean it's too maudline.

Overall it's an album that is better when you get used to it; though that said the album is what you make it depending on which songs you choose and in which order. Overall, evaluating all 20-tracks, it's certainly up there as a good album. Maybe lacking the appealing poppiness of their first two hits and definitely no 'I Predict A Riot', 'Ruby' or 'Never Miss A Beat' on it, it's definitely worth a listen, even if it's just to give the band some kudos for trying something different.

However, I found out this morning that there is indeed an actual physical release coming, and it's expanded tracklist is below, including three tracks not in the selection of 20, which does make you wonder...

1. Little Shocks
2. Things Change
3. Long Way From Celebrating
4. Starts With Nothing
5. Out Of Focus
6. Dead Or In Serious Trouble
7. When All Is Quiet
8. Kinda Girl You Are
9. Man On Mars
10. Child Of The Jago
11. Heard It Break
12. Coming Up For Air
13. If You Will Have Me / Howlaround

In that I chose seven from the selection, with four appearing in my 'part two' album. It's a shame that 'Problem Solved' and 'Can't Mind My Own Business' are not included as they are two of the strongest tunes, but luckily 'Out of Focus', 'Heard It Break' and 'Coming Up For Air' are, the latter rightfully near the end. Thankfully they haven't included the God-awful 'If You Will Have Me' but songs such as 'Dead Or In Serious Trouble' and 'Things Change' do deserve a place, and would appear on my album if I'd been able to do more than 10-tracks, but not as replacements for some others not in it.

But maybe that's the whole purpose of the exercise: the download option creates an album unique to you with the tracks that you like, which will probably have another fan scratching their head. So therefore this has probably been a success.