Tuesday evening, after partying hard at work, a group of us travelled to the NIA for the second of the month’s gigs, this time around it was to see the Kaiser Chiefs.

If you haven’t been under a rock for the past couple of years, then you will know that these lads from Leeds (which Mr Woodvine set me straight on, ta!) have produced some fine music titles and once again, were one of the artists that performed at Glastonbury earlier this year which of course inspired me (and others who wanted to come along) to go and see them just like Amy W. But regretfully unlike Amy, these were on fire musically.

Blasting out hit after hit such as ‘Everything is average nowadays’ (which became an in-joke between us all because of an average cheesecake sans biscuit-base in Weatherspoons) and ‘I Predict a Riot’, and fair play they kept the crowd entertained. They also previewed three songs from their forthcoming third album, of which ‘You Want History’ and ‘Never Miss A Beat’ were sounding fantastic and I do think those will be the singles from the next album.

The key to their music always appears to be having a bit on the song that everyone who knows just the tune can sing along with. I predict a riot comes easily to a crowd as does the bit where Ricky Wilson starts singing “We are the Angry Mob”, hell one song is called na naa naa so people can’t sing that, well break out the colouring books now. This gets people involved far easier and frankly it made for one hell of a karaoke session.

Ricky also surprised us by turning up right by where we were standing, singing along and this again added to the “bam” that the band gave to the crowd. It was also good to hear some of the lesser known songs from the albums that you never really bother listening to, like Want to be a dancer, hearing those kinds of tunes live make you look to the albums after to see what they were like when released all that time ago, which can only be a good thing.

It has to be said that if anything, the unsung hero of the show was the lighting. Believe it or not, it created such an atmosphere that added untold amounts to each song, especially to the new song ‘Never Miss a Beat’. I have been asked to compare this performance with that of Amy’s and well it’s just no comparison.

A fantastic show, certainly not average and frankly I can’t wait for the next album to hit the streets.

It should be noted kudos for the Pigeon detectives who were on before the Kaisers, that they gave a fair amount of energy bouncing around and singing something, the only song that was known was their single which has been played on the radio umpteen times, but no idea what it is called.

There were a few extra highlights to the evening, the cheesecake for instance became a topic as well as having various things on toast, and also is bread on toast for poor people who can’t afford to toast both pieces of bread? This is a worthwhile topic and should be researched. However this doesn’t factor in that this would require effort. Effort is costly to the soul and therefore should not be expended without good reason.

Pictures provided by Adrian Woodvine.