Kasabian - Velociraptor!

Kasabian are, to my mind, sometimes unfairly laughed at. I accept they have the deft touch of a blue whale and the self confidence to interrupt a Kanye West acceptance speech, but they’ve crafted enough truly anthemic songs to fill a ‘Best Of’ just three albums in. Now, only adding to the confusion they’re the toast of some critics, installed pointlessly early as favourites for next year’s Mercury Prize. So where does this fourth album, ‘Velociraptor!’, sit? Are they moving forwards with wanton experimentalism at the speed of light; are they rooting their feet firmly in the football terrace bravado of the early years?

Opener ‘Let’s Roll Just Like We Used To’, despite its Beady Eye-ish name, maintains a bouncy momentum without ever approaching top gear, leaving second track ‘Days Are Forgotten’ to introduce a charmingly lazy scream and the feel of a Bond theme. It’s not until fifth track ‘Velociraptor!’ that anything even slightly remarkable happens after that - a much faster Turkish sounding take on their old ‘XTRMNTR’ aping sound. It’s sure to divide opinion, but best taken as fun and dumb - the song equivalent of Tarantino’s ‘From Dusk Till Dawn’, thus adding to the impression that so far the album at its best has a very cinematic feel.

‘Shelter From The Storm’ keeps the Turkish rhythm rolling and adds in a fair measure of Led Zepellin’s ‘Kashmir’, but whenever the song leaves the safety of its driving riff it stalls in slow verses and a lack of instrumentation. ‘I Hear Voices’ is this album’s ‘Stuntman’ and does a perfectly fine job of sounding as though Kasabian are covering a Matthew Dear song, leaving next track ‘Re-wired’ to pick up the pace again. Despite a slow start, the track builds intriguingly into its psychedelic chorus and is perhaps the most “Kasabian” of all the songs on offer.

Penultimate track ‘Switchblade Smiles’ sees the madness finally amped up and all the bizarreness that made previous album ‘West Ryder Lunatic Asylum’ something of a rough diamond. It shows Kasabian let loose all the imagination this album falsely promised, tempered with the cohesion that ‘Velociraptor!’ has certainly shown. The album moves gracefully to its end with the starlit swoon of ‘Neon Noon’.

On first listen the album bored me; I spent all eleven tracks waiting for the quintet to announce their presence with fireworks and brash showmanship, only to be disappointed. On repeated listens however, it demonstrates some restraint, small nuances and, whisper it, a certain maturity. ‘Velociraptor!’ definitely seems less like a bucket full of disparate sounding ideas than expected, but at the expense of it sounding as alive and surprising. It exudes confidence (as ever), but seems nowhere near as keen to rip your face off and throw you into a vat of lemon juice. Maybe it’s Kasabian finding a place they’re comfortable in, finally.