KasabianKasabian’s 2009 endeavour West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum took the concept album route and nailed it. By contrast, 2011’s Velociraptor! was too many ideas with no direction. So here we are, album five, and 48:13 is somewhere in the middle. It’s not quite thematically cohesive, but neither is it as choppy as the preceding record. When 48:13 hits its stride, it is truly fantastic rock music: the anthemic, shout it at the top of your lungs, slow motion bodies jumping in a crowd type of rock music that is being consistently watered down on radio right now by the dreary likes of Coldplay.
The band have stripped back the excess for a happy balance between ballads and fist-pumping adrenaline. Tom Meighan is loaded with braggadocio on Bumblebee, and lead single Eez-Eh is pure dance rock amusement. The lyrics are mostly nonsensical, but if you’re coming to Kasabian’s music looking for Keats, you’ve taken a wrong turn, and it’s a cold-hearted soul who doesn’t join in on the bridge of “Gonna keep you up all night”. It’s all about melody here, be it via the insistent pulse of guitar on Stevie – lyrical content eerily reminiscent of New Order’s 1963 – or the spaghetti western synth lines on Doomsday. Bow, meanwhile, is Serge Pizzorno’s finest hour, with little electronic twinges and simple bass keeping him company as he crows, “Take a bow and say goodbye”.
48:13 isn’t the start of a musical revolution the way Kasabian dream it to be, but it’s still going to make you want to move.
