After a three album clutch had generated  next big thing accolades an ‘Indie’ tag but modes sales the brothers retreated disbanded and made solo albums to clear the air.

The resultant double album is anything but Indie. It’s filled (20 tracks) with an engaging flight through the clever, clever side of British  psyche pop, prog and village green era kinks. The spirits of XTC, ELO, Wings and a sprinkling of Yes are evident throughout.

So yes, it’s a prog referencing double album but it’s never self indulgent. The proggy elements are ever shifting time signatures rather than un-needed 14 minute harp solos. It’s all tied down with a laser like pop sensibility that makes every track never less than interesting.

There is the odd failure bit with 20 tracks to play with it’s easier to forgive.

7/10

Kasabian have unfortunately always been lumped in with the ladish/madchester scene; a pigeon hole which has hindered their musical efforts being taken as seriously as deserved.

‘West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum’, the group’s most conceptual work to date, will hopefully put all doubts to rest that the band are anything other than a stone roses re-hash, and push them towards a more appropriate fanbase.

The album has a wide range of musical genres.  Songs such as ‘Swarfiga’ and the title track give evidence to a heavy degree of Pink Floydian influence, a welcome blend with Kasabian’s recognizable dark electronica tone.  Whereas ‘Thick As Thieves’  breaks new ground for the band, taking us to the other end of the musical spectrum in it’s folky psychadelic journey around some gypsy wonderland.

For fans of previous album stompers such as ‘Shoot the Runner’ and ‘Club Foot’, look no further than the chunky bass driven ‘Fast Fuse’. A musical monster with a pace and attitude that wouldn’t sit out of place onboard a chopper going into Nam’.

Then there’s the anthemic‘Fire’, the album’s first ‘real’ single, (‘Vlad the Impaler’ was available via download), which delivers the soul tearing choruses we know, love and have come to expect from Kasabian.

WRPLA binds all these elements together to create a Frankenstein. Each sound contributes to creating a very well produced album that should see Kasabian receiving the recognition they deserve. 

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‘Thanks for the help Garvey but we’re ok, Ta’ 

We are in familiar Dove Territory here with recognisable Melodies and chiming guitars lying around all over the place. Things have moved on though.

Opener, Jet stream feels like the biggest shift from home here hinting at Sub Sub days with urgent beats driving it on, whilst they sound like they’ve  swallowed Grace Jones bass player on Compulsion (in a good way).

Title track Kingdom of rust sounds like it was written for a Pennines set western, a lovely Shuffling Lancastrian Mariachi of a thing.

So it’s more of the same. But different. Doves music still evokes the same stuff it always has, wide open spaces and a kind of bleak Euphoria but there is a constant forward movement to make them forever interesting. Excellent.

7/10

If you are interested at all by late 60’s, early 70’s American rock or the lineage that leads from Buffalo Springfield, Neil Young and the Byrd’s through to modern country rock then this is an important purchase.

Highlights include opener Song of Love, Rock and Roll Crazies and the epic Treasure.

If there had been any concern from fans that the announcement of a solo project meant Auer Bach had a Disco record inside him that had been straight jacketed by his day job, they need not worry. There are plaintive ballads, Trouble ways a Ton, but second track, I want some more and later on, The prowl, leave us in familiar territory with Auerbachs’ howling vocal and a chugging blues Rhythm.

Not a large musical leap in any direction but a more subtle Black Keys set. Singular.

But it looks like we are about to enter a prolonged Guitar band drought. Second and third albums by what we thought were fairly established bands like Razorlight and Kaiser Chiefs have failed to do the expected business with the Kaisers playing to a half empty MEN recently.

The Killers have abandoned their fenders for a bizarre Saxophone/Keyboard hybrid approach whilst the NME said lately of the previously guitar dependent Yeah Yeah Yeah’s, ‘killer album, but where are the guitars?’.

We have been here before though. Before the Stokes arrived fully formed to shake the cobwebs from the nations guitar racks was the post Britpop black hole. If a guitar band emerged in this period they were often unfairly tagged with the ‘Saviours of Rock’ label.

I was at Starsailors first major UK gig, in a hall full of people who had been told that they were watching one such band. A room full of expectation that they had neither the songs or the attitude to meet. Not their fault, more the Stone Roses generation hoping to have their lives transformed once more.

So like Britpop before, it seems to have got too big, too pop. Was the beginning of the end The Arctic Monkeys? For Britpop read Tony Blair appearing within the same Cool Britannia Vanity Fair issue that had Liam and Patsy on the cover. Perhaps Gordon Brown’s claim that he had the Arctics on his iPod did for it this time (hell, even Alex Turner is now making Scott Walker albums). It may have been this huge selling record that put the first nail in.

Chins up though, Johnny Marr has joined the Cribs. So there’s always that.

Things change pace thereafter  and a cocktail of different influences raise their heads. The Cureish baselines and well judged arrangements and instrumentation continue as different era’s compete for attention. A bit of Byrds/Jefferson Airplane here, some Talking Heads art school oddness there, with some gorgeous REM like backing vocals thrown in for good measure. But it wears it’s influences lightly. It’s respectful nods all round. 

Slap bang in the middle are two tunes that weave their way along with changes in pace and different movements. I was initially resistant to their charms but was eventually won over by the gorgeous breakdown and change of vocal in the last couple of minutes of Momentary Sanctuary. 

A confident, modern debut then, bristling with energy and ideas. And loads of great pop songs.

From me that’s a well earnt 8.5/10

So it’s synths and bass lines to the fore with guitars coming in to emphasise a point rather than leading the dance. Title track, To Lose my Life deserves to be a huge hit but E.S.T. Fifty on Our Foreheads and Death are equally good.

Derivative? Certainly, but absorbing none the less.

7.5/10

It would appear however that we did resist.

There is nothing within as struttingly brilliant as Take me out or conversely as annoying as Do you want to? It’s neither indie enough to be indie or straight out pop enough to be pop (they were rumoured to have approached Girls aloud musical svengali’s xemonmania in the gestation period for this record).You will find plenty of synths and some crunching base lines, Turn it on especially.Dance music then?

Dance music, in Mojo! Hang on!

That’s a 6/10 from me

Touchstones here are blissed out beachboys, beat heavey Beck, The Flaming lips and the kind of euphoric Chanted gospel last found served up by The polyphonic spree. It’s Blissful, Spectral melodic music that  meanders from point “a” to point ”b” with any combination of instruments & sounds aloud on the journey. This is already been hailed by the likes of Uncut & NME as an album of the year contender.

I’ll give it 9/10