You might learn to love the loony tunes
WELL, they were never likely to come back with something simple, were they?
Having clocked up nearly a decade together and endured adjustments to their manpower as well as their hair amid the mayhem of global success, Monday's return of Kasabian sees a rather different band from the one that shook Sheffield Arena on the tour for second album Empire.
Where that triple-platinum record and subsequent road trips were arguably a rapid- fire response to the momentum of their debut album breaking them through to the big boy's room, West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum is an altogether different beast.
If its predecessors were the party in two parts, album three is the ponderous, slightly disturbed and tainted half-light calm that is the next morning.
After the seismic results of their self-titled debut and Empire, songwriting guitarist Serge Pizzorno was under no illusion they had to pull something challenging out of the bag.
"The third record is the one you're judged on," he says simply. "It's where you've established yourself and people find out who you really are. In terms of success we've breached the walls. Now it's time to destroy the system from within."
Certainly the title track, with its a duet between Tom Meighan and Sin City actress Rosario Dawson, is as far away from Reason Is Treason and Club Foot as you're likely to get.
And while some of the surrounding content might have disappointed the oiks who emptied their bladders into used beer cups at Attercliffe last time around, it demonstrates what else these Leicester long hairs can do.
On the face of it much of WRPLA is approaching dull by comparison, sound-wise at least, although by touching on subjects such as 'broken Britain' it is lyrically topical.
Fast Fuse and early download taster Vlad The Impaler pick up the pace as does well chosen 'bridging' single Fire, but tracks such as closer Happiness and the haunting Middle Eastern-flavoured Secret Alphabets demand patience not hedonism.
Certainly this influx of more considered, less bombastic moments from the enigmatic Serge and his cohorts has provided an opportunity to go to real toilets for those who've caught the first half of Kasabian's 20-date UK summer tour – including nine rather apt outdoor shows beside Oasis. With Wembley still to come, a million people will have tasted this special K come the autumn.
The new songs, with a more organic production approach by Serge and Dan The Automator of DJ Shadow/Gorilla infamy, have allowed Tom's vocals to shine and round off the most atmospheric music Kasabian – now completed by Chris Edwards (bass) and Ian Matthews (drums), founding guitarist Chris Karloff having quit around the time of Empire – have tendered.
With 73,021 copies of WRPLA sold in just four days, it seems plenty are still ready to follow the band on the next stage of their journey.
"Empire was a difficult time," reflects Serge. "This time I wanted to take my time and create something on a grander scale.
You're always told that you should write 10 hit singles, but we thought: 'Let's throw it out of the window and go even more mental'."
Two years later and this 52-minute mixed up kid – "the soundtrack to an imaginary movie" – is as much a statement of intensity as it is a reaction to what the masses might have expected of them.
And for that alone Kasabian deserve respect.
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Weather for Sheffield
Saturday 26 May 2012
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Temperature: 9 C to 21 C
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