Kaiser Chiefs doing it their way
It’s been a good 18 months since the Kaiser Chiefs were around but Nick “Peanut” Baines promises the band mates put their time to good use.
You’ll hear that on “Start the Revolution” the new mix-and-match-your-own-tracks album the band just released. The idea grew from the band mates’ interest in how people have shifted the way they consume music even during the past few years.
“Everything has changed a lot,” Baines said. “I am a big fan of the album but millions of people are buying [songs] one track at a time. So we said ‘OK, let’s mess around with this a bit.’”
The label gave the band the go ahead and the result are rock tracks that range from punk/electronic mixes such as “On the Run” to the percussion heavy “Cousin in the Bronx” from which the album title was born.
Although the Leeds-based band constantly reinvents its brand of rock, Baines said this album was an especially easy process with one idea coming to fruition and the rest falling into line.
“We definitely need to do something different,” he said of the constant musical shifts by the band. “We had the break to get away from the self-imposed pressure [we felt to create a new album]. We are experts [at putting pressure on ourselves.”
The gritty feel of the tracks is no accident. As the band mates looked at the excitement around vinyl sales and other nostalgia, their quest to make something “memorable” came to fruition with this garage friendly sound that does, indeed, harken back a few decades.
“It’s all about dreaming, isn’t it?” he said. “You have all these crazy ideas, and it is just insane.”
See them: The Kaiser Chiefs play Rams Head Live, 20 Market Place, at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 10. Tickets are $25. For details, go to www.ramsheadlive.com
Nancy Dunham is a music journalist based in Washington, D.C. Her work appears in Relix, YRB, Spinner, M Music & Musicians, American Songwriter and other publications.