Kasabian
"I think we're a great rock 'n roll credit to the fucking British fucking UK fucking market," claims Tom Meighan, vocalist for Kasabian. He's talking about where he sees his band when compared to the greatest bands of the last 50 years of rock 'n roll. It's no empty claim either; Kasabian may be well-noted for their big-boasting ways, but there's a confidence in what he says that indicates that it's not just arrogance but surety that makes him believe this to be so. "I think everyone thought we were going to disappear after the first record," he sneers, "but I believe we've made our mark on rock 'n roll. There's no rock 'n roll bands left anymore - there's no one that has the influence of Can in their music, or Tangerine Dream, or the Pretty Things. No one's got the balls anymore to do that kind of music and it's crazy. There's no one who has that belief anymore, and you've got to believe in your music." Opinions on Kasabian vary widely, with very little middle ground - it's either love or hate. It would seem, for the Leicester-born four-piece who have, over the course of three albums, got increasingly more anthemic with every release. Their latest opus, 'West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum', is exactly that - an epic rock beast that runs the full gamut from quick-fire pop-rock in the form of Fire to a tender ballad like Thick As Thieves. "We're influenced by a lot of different things, and we're NOT even arrogant," he says hotly. "We're just good at doing rock 'n roll music - we're REALLY good at it. We make fantastic pop-rock songs, and there's nothing wrong with that." As an album, their third release is one that amplifies everything - there's no room for conservative types, with 'West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum' taking everything that the band had done previously and pushing it further and faster. It's also very much a studio creation; the transition from recorded releases to being performed in the live context was a challenging one. "In Britain we had stage props and things like that - but our tour in the UK was heaps rare and I don't think we'd ever do it again (that way). We just play man, we just play balls-out rock 'n roll. The way we're playing it now is very much like the record." That's what Australian audiences can expect to see - as he puts it, what we'll get is very much 'just a live show'. "The thing is it's just about the music rather than a spectacle," Meighan says. "If we're headlining a festival in front of 80,000 people or something it's different, but when it's your own (show) it's very much just about the music." It's hard to believe that this would even be possible. Yet Meighan outlines that when they're constructing a soundscape in the studio that it's a process that takes time, with 'West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum' being an involved beast. "We toured like mad bastards behind our first two albums," he says, "and then we had a bit of time off and took our time - but the outcome was unbelievable, so it was well worth it." It's an eclectic album, with quite a strange tracklisting - the most obvious single, Fire, comes not early on in the album but is instead buried deep within the playlist, sitting as the second last song. Most bands push their best material up so as to engage the listening audience from the get-go, but Kasabian have done things differently. "We sat down and discussed what would sound great where. For some reason we put Fire near the end so you're left waiting and waiting and waiting, and it worked - normally all the singles go to the front rather than the back, but we did it the other way around this time." The album was also something of a conceptual release - each track on the album is designed to represent an inmate within the asylum, with the West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum a group of mental institutions built in West Yorkshire, England in the 1880s- one such place set up primarily to treat / house the poor - previously, it had been the wealthy who were given the opportunity to be treated for mental conditions. "It's all about different characters," Meighan outlines. "To be honest, man, like I said, it's just the way it is because that's how we did - it's like a story, we just made a tale that's really dark in places. It's like all those `60s psychedelic bands making stories up with a different tale here and a different song there. It's like the Small Faces, 'Ogden's Nut Gone Flake', and bands like the Beatles with 'Sgt. Peppers' and things like that." Now that, ladies and gentleman, is what you call ambition - for Kasabian to compare their third album to some of the greatest music ever recorded shows that perhaps they're not arrogant but instead ambitious - and what is life without wanting to be the best that you can be? Kasabian are touring Australia in July as part of Splendour in the Grass, and are actually coming to Adelaide, hitting Thebarton Theatre on Wed 28 Jul.  |
Issue 497
Features
