Who? Kaiser Chiefs
What’s the story? The first minute of this comeback track from Kaiser Chiefs is one of the most disorienting things you will listen to this year. The band have teamed up with Brian Higgins - the man behind the production team Xenomania, who steered Girls Aloud's career and who also worked with the likes of The Saturdays, Pet Shop Boys and Alesha Dixon - for their forthcoming sixth album Stay Together, and this track is the first taste of it.
At first, Ricky Wilson's voice seems completely incongruous with the synth-heavy, vocoder and steel drum-backing but, slowly, it starts to make some sort of sense, with a giant, melancholic chorus recalling Girls Aloud's The Loving Kind whilst also nodding to Coldplay's recent sound. This is unashamedly pop, and in the band's words, "If Education, Education, Education & War was our protest album, then Stay Together is our relationship album. Working with Brian Higgins brought a very different approach to song writing and recording, it was a steep learning curve but together we tried out new ideas and sounds and ended up with a new and fresh sounding record, like no Kaiser Chiefs record you have heard before." They're dead right on that and it'll be interesting to see how their fans react.
For fans of: Girls Aloud, Coldplay, Embrace
In three words: Indie goes pop
