Kaiser Chiefs - 'Yours Truly, Angry Mob' (B-Unique) Released 26/02/07

With its ominous title you could almost be forgiven for thinking that the Kaiser Chiefs’ second long-player would be a foray into more intriguing realms, considering the paranoid world climate and all that, thus packing more muscle than their relatively blithe debut ‘Employment.’ Look, they’ve even followed Razorlight’s lead in having a drab black and white band shot for a the album cover, seemingly to be taken ‘more seriously’ as artists. But sadly, bar the odd moment, ‘Yours Truly, Angry Mob’ is very much business as usual for the Leeds lads. Repetition, check. School boy rhyming schemes, check. Plenty of fucking “la la la’s”, check. Crucially however, whereas two years ago these were all traits that warmed some people to the Kaisers, now it’s just outright annoying.

Lead track ‘Ruby’ encapsulates the grating qualities of the album perfectly. Radio-friendly to the point of nausea, Mr Wilson spouts his monotonous repetitive “Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, do you, do you, do you, do you…” lines with plenty of enthusiasm amidst what is, musically at least, a catchy tune. Fundamentally though, this is dumbed-down, one dimensional music that, yes, inexorably gets stuck in your head (for days on end), but for anyone out of their teens it neither challenges nor excites. In fact, so blatant are the Kaisers’ gimmicks in drawing you in, it’s almost insulting as a listener.

Unfortunately there are worse examples in point to be found here. The semi-serious ‘I Can Do It Without You’ not only contains the obligatory repetition and awful word play, but it’s a turgid tune too. Later, ‘Try My Best’ sees them slow the often hurried pace down and old Ricky goes all serious on us. Okay, some commendation can be given for them trying to do something different, but this is possibly the worst Kaiser Chiefs song committed to plastic - we even get a cringe-inducing stadium rock-esque guitar solo thrown in for good measure.