Good Weather For Airstrikes

I don’t like the Kaiser Chiefs. One bit. So why did I go see them at Roseland Ballroom tonight, when they rolled through NYC on their current NME-sponsored tour with the Walkmen and Annuals? Because I think Annuals just might be America’s most talented and promising young band, even if it was kind of curious seeing them on a tour put on by the NME. Plus, having seen them put on two lovely in-store acoustic performances (which is two more in-store acoustic performances than I’ve seen of any other band), I was jonesin’ for a taste of the real thing. And what a taste it was.

Unfortunately, since the band had told me last night that they’d be taking the stage at 8, I arrived at 7:45 only to learn that they in fact went on at 7:30, and that I had missed the first half of their set. Color me bummed. That said, I was still able to catch four songs, and what I did hear was fucking phenomenal. “Dry Clothes” was fantastic, as was “Carry Around”, which was my original favorite song of theirs, but it was a mind-blowing performance of “Brother” complete with a four man drum sesh and all sorts of maniacal screaming on the part of frontman Adam Baker that let everyone in attendance know just how special this band is.

With the clock hitting 8 and their 30-minute opening slot dwindling, I expected the band to hit the showers after “Brother”, but in an awesome turn of events, they transitioned smoothly from “Brother” into an absolute incredible closing number that’s currently unavailable, but I’m told will be on their next record. The largely instrumental track opened with a stirring piano riff that kept feeling like it was only seconds away from turning into Vanessa Carlton’s “1,000 Miles” (though I’m pretty glad it didn’t), before the drums roared to life and square-danced with some electronic meanderings for a bit, gradually building in intensity and threatening to strike at any moment. The coup de grace was finally delivered shortly thereafter when the drums dropped out for a moment to allow guitarists Kenny Florence and Mike Robinson to step into the spotlight and lay down some monumental riffage that stood out as the singular highlight of the entire evening. Eventually the drums returned to their former glory, some vocals were laid down and the piano returned to close things out, and the lights dimmed on the set of the obvious stars of the evening, no matter what the marquee read. Despite catching only four (albeit phenomenal) tracks, Annuals showed me an incredible display of passion and raw energy not seen from a new band by me since Cold War Kids last April and the Arcade Fire in January of 2005 before that, which is some pretty decent company to be in if you ask me. These kids are going to do huge things.

MP3s:
“Brother” - Annuals ((highly recommended))
“Carry Around” - Annuals

Despite my lack of enthusiasm for both the Walkmen (”The Rat” aside, of course) and the Kaiser Chiefs, I stuck around because I paid thirty fucking dollars for my ticket and have heard from countless respected sources that regardless of my negative feelings towards le Chiefs, their live show was not to be missed. The Walkmen, whose attire suggested they came straight from the office, provided the sedatives of the evening in the form of one of the more boring sets I’ve seen recently. To be fair, though, I left the crowd to grab a comfortable seat and kind of stopped paying attention after they mercifully graced the audience with “The Rat” three songs in. Suffice it to say, they weren’t much fun. They did, however, have the littlest drummer I’ve ever seen. Seriously, dude looked like he’d just gotten back from his bar mitzvah. Shit was adorable.

MP3: “The Rat” - The Walkmen ((highly recommended))

Anyway, after the Walkmen sufficiently lulled everyone into a state of peaceful tranquility it was time for the Kaiser Chiefs to take the stage, and after keeping us waiting around for quite some time with those huge NME.COM spotlights soaring all over the place, they finally did. And you know what? They put on a pretty good show. But they were certainly twats about it. I mean, it’s remarkable how much I dislike them, which really bothers me considering I loved pretty much every other band to emerge from the dance-rock movement of 2005 (except Kasabian. Fuck Kasabian). I’m pretty sure they’re all older than they should be, and referring to themselves as “The World Famous Kaiser Chiefs!” didn’t help them much in my book either.

Furthermore, Ricky Wilson was quite the d-bag himself, demanding that the audience sing all the words to every single song and saying things like “Obviously everyone here knows all the words to this one” and so on and so forth. But yeah, I guess he can work a crowd pretty well, and he does a pretty impressive job of pogo-ing maniacally about the stage whilst simultaneously maintaining a rhythm on his tambourine. And the part when he put his microphone in the mic stand and then threw the stand up in the air, catching only the microphone when it landed was kind of cool. But yeah, whatever, they put on a good live show, I said it. I even found myself getting into tracks I previously loathed like “Every Day I Love You Less And Less” and “Nananana”, but hey - I wasn’t happy about it. I will, however, relent that “Ruby” is catchy-as-shit and sounded awesome live, but how can you not enjoy a track with a chorus as ruthlessly addictive as “Ruby-Ruby-Ruby-Ruby-Ruby!”, as insultingly simple as it may be. So yes, in conclusion: the Kaiser Chiefs put on an impressive live show and did a solid job of working the crowd, but I still wish they would go away, and sooner rather than later.

MP3: “Ruby” - Kaiser Chiefs

OH MY GOODNESS
This makes me about as happy as anything I’ve ever heard. Thanks to GvB for this one.

Yeah that’s all. Klaxons tomorrow night. At Studio B. YES x 1,000,000.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 13th, 2007 at 1:25 am and is filed under Live Review. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.