Chat with a Chief!

Liz Crosthwaite • Published 26 Jan 2012 13:06 0 Comments

Liz Crosthwaite chats to Kaiser Chiefs bassist Simon Rix

KAISER Chiefs made something of comeback in 2011. After a three-year hiatus, they returned with a new album, The Future Is Medieval, and a new concept - that fans would be able to use a special website to choose from 20 complete tracks and build their very own, personalised 13-track album. Innovative indeed.

And now in 2012 the Leeds indie kings are back on the road with a (sold-out) date at Reading's The Hexagon on Saturday.

"A lot of bands moan about people not buying their music and we thought rather than moaning it's better to try and do something different, so that's what we did!" Simon said of the fan-built album idea.

"I do not know if we 'grew up' with this album. I think we got a lot more musical, I think there's a lot of interesting sounds and layers and lyrics because we had a lot more time to make that record. I had not listened to it for a while, but we are doing some vinyl of it for ourselves and for very limited sale and we got the test copies and I listened to all the songs on the test press and I was well impressed! Which is bigheaded isn't it? But I was thinking what a great sort of set of songs it was!"

With indie in something of a doldrums, and pop albums out-selling rock for the first time in seven years, I asked whether Simon thought Kaiser Chiefs could help put guitar bands back in the charts. "At the moment there's a lot of guitar bands out there but they are maybe not having the kind of success they used to," he said. "The chart is so weird it is hard to take it seriously anymore, you do not need to sell a lot of records to get in. I do not know if we can single-handedly bring guitar bands back, but we'll keep touring, writings great songs and great albums!"

Simon explained that the band were excited to be back on tour after their break: "There's some smaller gigs on this tour so it's very much about the live experience, the rock and roll. We have got some brand new songs that we going to play that nobody has heard before, so that is new and exciting!"

And of course I had to ask the all-important question: will Kaiser Chiefs be playing Reading and Leeds? Unfortunately Simon wasn't giving much away: "We will hopefully be playing those two. We did one gig on the main stage before Franz Ferdinand [in 2007] and that was a brilliant gig, one of the best we have done, I think."

So it seems we'll have to wait a little longer to find out if Little John's Farm will be rocking to the sounds of Ruby once again. But fingers crossed!

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This article appeared in Reading Chronicle 26 Jan 12

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