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Kaiser Chiefs
Yours Truly, Angry Mob
(Universal Motown)
First Appeared in The Music Box, March 2007, Volume 14, #3
Written by John Metzger
Considering the success of its debut Employment, the Kaiser Chiefs
would be crazy to alter its approach. Not surprisingly, then, Yours Truly,
Angry Mob, the band’s sophomore outing, largely follows a similar pattern of
stuffing infectious melodies with sing-along choruses inside oversized,
arena-ready arrangements. Throughout the set, the Kaiser Chiefs, with help from
producer Stephen Street, once again casts Blur’s Brit-pop back in time, smashing
it into the mellifluent musings of The Smiths, the punk-ish theatricality of The
Kinks, and the maximum-impact R&B of The Who. On Thank You Very Much, the
ensemble perfectly captures the essence of the punk-driven side of early ’80s
new wave, while The Angry Mob skewers reactionary thought with a barroom
chant that is designed specifically to cause an outbreak of drunken warbling.
Elsewhere, Heat Dies Down, a song about waiting for a relationship to
end, nabs its intro from the Rolling Stones’ Paint It Black before diving
full-force into its anxious, stampeding groove. Likewise, as a head of steam is
built on Highroyds, the music increasingly draws to mind The Who’s
Live at Leeds-era performances of Tommy.
Beneath the surface of Yours Truly, Angry Mob, however, something is
missing, and the problem stems entirely from the notion that the album’s
individual components are better than the sum of its parts. Each track is an
indisputable anthem, but when taken in full, the collection’s 12 songs, despite
their superficial eclecticism, sound too much alike. In effect, Yours Truly,
Angry Mob is made for an iPod player set on shuffle or for its contents to
be picked apart and reassembled in piecemeal fashion on a myriad of self-made
mix tapes. As long as the endeavor is approached with this perspective in mind,
there are many pleasures to be had. Expecting anything further, however, is
bound to leave behind a rather disappointing aftertaste. 
Yours Truly, Angry Mob is available from Amazon.com.
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Ratings
1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!
Copyright © 2007 The Music Box
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