Kasabian – West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum

is a long album and it’s obvious that Kasabian are wanting it to be seen as a complete work rather than as a collection of singles or as simply a pop album. With the artwork they’re attempting to create something iconic and whilst the cover is interesting it’s not as striking as they’d like to believe. This is somewhat representative of the album as a whole, and whilst it’s by no means a bad effort it’s the feel of a group striving for longevity and classic status early on in their career. ‘West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum’ may not help them achieve this, but it should put to bed any image of them being an ‘indie’ or ‘ladrock’ band, for what we’ve got is a dubby mix of electronica and psychedelia that somehow manages to form a roughly cohesive whole.

It opens with ‘Underdog’ which is most reminiscent of the group’s self-titled record, an electro-blues throb and lyrics such as “I got my cloak and dagger in a bar room brawl”. This then flows brilliantly into ‘Where Did All The Love Go?’, which seems fated to be a single, and rightly so, with a vinyl crackle, dubby bassline and semi-deranged vocals on the chorus all backed by a sampled string section. So early on in the album and Kasabian have already thrown more at the wall than a band with their laddish reputation can normally get away with; nearer to Primal Scream than any of their contemporaries, or the acts they normally associate themselves with. This is most evident on album closer ‘Happiness’ which comes flavoured with the summer and provided it receives regular outings will cement Kasabian as an excellent festival band.

Throughout the rest of the record we’ve got sampled string sections (‘Take Aim’ sounds like the band wrote a Bond theme and then put it through a blender), semi-acoustic songs (the frankly bizzare ‘Thick As Thieves’) and a sample of dialogue from somewhere (‘West Ryder Silver Bullet’). Sadly not all of this works and occasionally, such as on ‘Vlad The Impaler’, it all becomes a bit noisy and a little cringeworthy (especially when the lyrics are considered) but overall we massively prefer this to a world where bands stick to what they know and pollute the airwaves with drivel (seriously, do The Twang really need to come back?).

It’s fitting that in amongst all of this crazyness on ‘West Ryder…’ there’s Kasabian’s biggest single to date. ‘Fire’, even ignoring the boost it’s received from featuring in a car advert, is tremendous and with it’s massive shifts in volume between verse and chorus, determined not to be participating in the terrible mastering of the volume wars. Aside from this, the best tracks here seem to be ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’, ‘Roll The Dice’ and ‘Secret Alphabets’. The former fitting in rather well with the lunatic asylum theme and feeling somewhat historical, and coming across for some reason as something that we feel that we shouldn’t like, while the latter is rather indebted to the feel of wild west films.

Overall we understand that with this being a Kasabian record, a crossover into fanbase that’s already made up its mind about the group is less likely than seeing a Gallagher at one of Blur’s Hyde Park shows however, we think that given half a chance there’s quite a few people out there who might actually quite like ‘West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum’. It’s just a shame the title is such a bloody mouthful.