Live Review

Kaiser Chiefs – The O2, Dublin

• 5th Mar 2009

The Kaiser Chiefs are nothing if not disappointing.

That’s not as bad as it sounds. A band can’t be disappointing unless they’re promising, and few debut albums got as much positive attention as their 2005 release, ‘Employment’.

They have produced good songs, promising material, even strong albums. But somehow they haven’t managed to follow through on their early potential.

It’s to their credit, though, that playing live at the O2, they focus a lot on the early material that they know the crowd want to hear. The quality of their older songs hasn’t diminished with time and ‘I Predict A Riot’ remains a genuine classic. The newer songs simply don’t work as well, and it’s a shame to see these songs alongside the Kaiser Chief’s early, excellent work – the contrast doesn’t do them any favours.

Cynics will say that the Kaiser Chiefs were never very stylistically diverse in their output, certainly in their single releases, and they would have a point – but lots of bands manage to churn out consistent, similar music according to a formula for years without any major decline in quality.

It could be said that the Kaiser Chiefs aren’t getting worse, they’re staying the same and their audience is just getting bored of them – but the responses that tracks from ‘Employment’ and, to a lesser extent, ‘Yours Truly, Angry Mob’ proves that they really did have something back when we all thought they did, and there really has been a change.

‘Never Miss A Beat’ is a stonking return to form however and it went down well with the crowd when played alongside ‘I Predict A Riot’, but it’s an isolated beacon of hope for those of us still holding out for a return to former glories.

Based on this performance, though, it seems like it’s a lot to ask.