Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 28/08/06
Label: Columbia

When your correspondent interviewed Kasabian towards the start of last year, singer Tom Meighan and guitarist Sergio Pizzorno related a very telling anecdote. The pair had a meeting with a record company exec in the hope of snaring a deal, and they kept silent throughout, leaving all the talking to their manager. Sometimes it's better to look the part and let other people assume you know what you're doing, they explained. If they'd have opened their mouths, the exec would have seen right through them.

If only they'd heeded their own advice with "Empire". After what feels like months of Meighan and Pizzorno telling anyone within shouting distance that this record is a classic to rate alongside The Stones and Led Zeppelin, the listener's almost willing it to fail when they first press play. The band's self-titled debut didn't amount to much more than self-belief and a couple of excellent bass lines, after all, so an even more bombastic version of that is going to be hard to swallow. That title doesn't bode well either - this has all the hallmarks of a huge, overbearing, empty album.

But no! What doesn't often come across in print with Meighan and Pizzorno is that many of their proclamations are delivered with a smirk and raised eyebrow - they're simply enjoying themselves playing the stupid, outspoken, cartoonish game of rock'n'roll. And so far from being an unbearably smug and self-important album (see Oasis circa "D'You Know What I Mean?"), "Empire" is actually a fun record. A ridiculous, often preposterous, unwittingly hilarious record, yes, but also a record that leaves you laughing with it as well as at it.

And the fun starts straight away. The title track and "Shoot The Runner" are strutting, Glitter Band-go-contemporary pop jigs that feel like Goldfrapp playing a cruel joke on the audience of "CD: UK". "Last Trip (In Flight)" is Hawkwind's "Silver Machine" dragged into the machine age - hilarious, hackneyed, but with a chorus that sweeps you off your feet. "Me Plus One" and "Sun/Rise/Light/Flies" plump for baggy psychedelia, part Lo-Fidelity All Stars, part Soup Dragons mugging through "I'm Free". Again, your brain is laughing at the stupidity of it all, but your body's jigging along, a pure guilty pleasure.

For a band apparently obsessed with cool, "Empire" is possibly the uncoolest record to have been released in over a decade. If they're not dumbly reviving baggy's cabaret nadir, they're falling Jet-like for a rock cliché with the acoustic Stones homage of "British Legion" or attempting a bizarre Muse tribute with "Seek & Destroy", presumably to cover all the bases.

But rather than add up to 2006's most laughable album, "Empire" has an almost childlike energy and determination that makes it feel strangely charming. And every so often they pull off a moment of true idiot savant genius - at the end of "The Doberman" they suddenly morph into a mariachi Led Zeppelin - that has you cheering them along, grand folly and all. Not quite the classic they'd talked up, then, but a darn sight better than that wretched Primal Scream album.

    by Ian Watson