Kaiser Chiefs - Duck

For those young enough to only really know Ricky Wilson as a judge on The Voice and his band as the kind that turn up midway on the main stage at Isle of Wight festival, let us hammer the point home: upon their mid-’00s arrival, Kaiser Chiefs were genuinely exciting - a cheeky group of next-gen Britpoppers with a twinkle in their eye and a batch of anthemic, idiosyncratic hits. So to bemoan their seventh LP for the confused stinker that it is is not an easy pop, but a real lament for a band that used to be so much more.

Yet, alas, ‘Duck’ remains just that: an album that attempts beery chants (‘People Love One Another’), rasping rawk (‘The Only One’), hand-jiving brass sections (‘Wait’) and something we’re guessing they thought sounded a bit like New Order (‘Record Collection’), all with the lack of believability of a band of actors, trying on styles for size. There are a couple of fleeting moments (the chorus of ‘Wait’ is a hooky, soaring thing) that remind you of the unabashed earworms that the Kaisers can produce at their best but, for the most part, ‘Duck’ is actually a bit of a turkey.