The Future Is Medieval

Kaiser Chief new album was compiled by the band’s fans

The war against piracy has turned for the cotemporary performers into a problem as serious as writer’s block, conflicts with a label or drop of popularity. The indie-rockers from Kaiser Chiefs proposed quite an interesting solution. After eighteen months of studio labor on their fourth album, The Future Is Medieval, they urged their fans to stay from buying illegal records of the new material, but instead to design their own version of the long player. Any listener was offered on the band’s website a range of twenty brand new songs, a selection of covers, and a huge space for fantasy. Charged a small sum, they were allowed to listen to a minute of each track so as to compile their personal hot ten and put a proper picture on the virtual CD. This attraction was available for almost a month and later followed by an official release. At the end of June 2011, The Future Is Medieval was finally issued as a set of twelve tracks picked out from the collection familiar to the audience plus one unheard piece, Kinda Girl You Are, completed past due.

A heart is harder to reach than a stadium

The Future Is Medieval does not have so many hits, specifically manufactured for concerts, as the previous Kaiser Chiefs did. Hit number one is placed right at the beginning of the CD. This is the single Little Shock, another proper song with the chorus as the only thing worth waiting. It is followed by Things Change with some weird shuffling of rhythm and instruments, which is, after all, something new! Unconfident, yet praiseful, efforts to write something other than arena anthems were made repeatedly throughout The Future Is Medieval, making it one of the album’s main attractions. When All Is Quiet, and If You Will Have Me come as surprise with their non-Kaiser Chiefs lyrical touching turn. For this, you can forgive the band their simplicity of the melody and mediocrity of the vocals. Another revelation is the mystique Child Of The Jago, a classy soundtrack to just any thriller. These examples are enough to show Kaiser Chiefs’ striving for creative novice. What else is noticeable is the deeper lyrical content. Now, not all the texts are suitable for mindless screaming out of the crowd. For instance, you can take Starts With Nothing. It touches upon the question of choosing the right values and eventuality of life. Truth be told, the music accompaniment in the shape of ringing and lively guitars is not the best option. Still, this is the beginning to a new sort of lyrics!

Time to go farther

It does not look like every band is ready to record twenty songs to entrust them to its listeners. Kaiser Chiefs seem capable and eager enough to do it since they made so much material and put endless and irrational trust into their support. Their audacious experiment is likely to remain nothing but an original trick and will hardly become another music market rule. However, in the methodology of music produce design and distribution, the Kaiser Chiefs guys can now be considered innovators and something close to professors. In the meantime, their progress regarding actual music is not that remarkable. They find it painful to part with the basic formula applied for practically each song off their debut long player, Employment (2005), arguably, their most popular effort to date. It is not that since then, the band has been playing any worse. It is rather that until not long ago they had been playing the same stuff over and over, without exposing any musician’s healthy and necessary need to change and improve something. The Future Is Medieval looks to signify the much-anticipated ice breaking. Not all of the tracks are nice or individual, but they, indeed, are different. This, certainly, gives solid ground for trust in the band’s better future.