Hail To The Chiefs

Ricky Wilson bounds across the room, flashing a grin that dazzles like the headlights on a flying saucer. “Knackered! Absolutely knackered,” exclaims the Kaiser Chiefs front-man although no one has inquired. “Still, can’t complain" he says, pausing to adjust the skinny tie that is presumably intended to convey no-wave glam but which actually exaggerates his resemblance to an errant school boy. “All in a good cause, isn’t it? “

That good cause is the rise (and rise, and rise...) of Kaiser Chiefs, broadest and – when did this happen? – most popular exponents of what we are starting to call the ‘new Britpop’. And if Wilson, the singer whose ‘cheeky chav’ persona infects the band’s music like a well-meaning virus, is in the clutches of euphoric exhaustion, who can blame him?
On the eve of the Chiefs’ first major headline tour (the past 18 months have been spent skulking around the UK toilet circuit) the five piece from Leeds find themselves, wide eyed and gawking, in the epicenter of a media blitzkrieg. The ripping noise they can hear is the sound of their reality being uprooted and flung to the winds.
They have just flown in from London, where they performed on the Ant and Dec show; before that there was New York and a slot on Letterman. Tonight they play to a sold out Ambassador (it was supposed to be the much smaller Village – then the single ‘Oh My God’ happened). In-between there are promotional chores, the attentions of record company executives and burgeoning fame to be dealt with. Listening to Wilson, suddenly I’m knackered too.
“We try not to let it consume our lives, but sometimes it is hard to get away from things,” explains drummer Nick Hodgson a little later. “The other day, I was out with my girlfriend and we passed a kid with a Kaiser Chiefs t-shirt at the bus stop and then we went into a pub and they were bloody playing the Kaiser Chiefs. I had to laugh. There are times I we think we’re living in a cocoon."
Wilson, who has now donned a purple sports jacket which makes him look like a 1950s boot boy as outfitted by Alexander McQueen, is nodding with good natured vehemence.
“Yeah, girlfriends are great because you can tell them all this stuff and not sound like you’re showing off,” he notes. “If you say it to your mates, it’s like you’re trying to be a big head or something. And you can’t go on about it in the press ‘cos people will think you are moaning about being popular.”
He has to shout slightly to make himself heard. We’re huddled on the first floor of the Ambassador Theatre, Dublin, speaking at volume over the monstrous ‘thunk-thunk-thunk’ of a very angry bass guitar being tuned, possibly by a man with no hands.
What we are hearing, observes Hodgson, is another of the blessings of (mid-level) success: roadies. Having lugged their own gear on interminable support slots over the past few years proper equipment and stage crew are a novelty Kaiser Chiefs have yet to grow jaded of.
“We know that an awful lot is going to be asked of us over the next few months but we aren’t griping about it. Everything we wanted for Kaiser Chiefs is happening. Why wouldn’t we be up for it?"
Hodgson isn’t what you expect of a member of Kaiser Chiefs, whose debut, Employment, feels as English as a pork pie plonked in a pint of Tetleys. Wilson aside, in fact, none of the group live up to the children-of-Blur stereotype. They are reflective, articulate and seem of a rather avant-garde persuasion.
If there is a unifying theme to the new Britpop, declares Wilson, it is diversity. None of the bands currently riding high, he says, really sound like each other (the cynic might mutter that they all sound like groups from a decade ago).
“It’s exciting that musicians are drawing from so many influences,” he continues. “ If you look at the bands out there at the moment, they are taking bits of rock and dance and reggae and pop and making something unique of it. Perhaps there was a Britpop ‘sound’ in the 1990s. There certainly isn’t one now. We’re all doing our own thing, which keeps it exciting.”
Kaiser Chiefs, it is popularly held, are the most archetypal of the current English bands, their songs exuding a quintessential Britishness. The breakthrough single, ‘I Predict A Riot’ (a paean to the band’s reputedly debauched club-night ‘Pigs’ in Leeds) evokes the England of post-pub scuffles outside a chip ship, while ‘Oh My God’ references the cheery bloke-rock of The Kinks (when they were feeling throwaway), Squeeze and even Madness.
Yet the nostalgia which permeates the album is palpably absent from the band’s patter. Employment may sound like a manifesto disguised as a pop record but Kaiser Chiefs don’t see it that way. They are not interested especially in exploring what it means to be English in 2005; Gordon Brown’s recent quest to uncover the “soul” of the nation leaves them unruffled. Like a killer swerve-and-pass from Wayne Rooney, their songs are elegant without necessarily being complex or capable of withstanding deep scrutiny.
“We didn’t set out to write a concept album,” says Wilson. “In fact we didn’t set out to write any particular sort of album. The songs just came out. Actually, we are a little surprised at how poppy and immediate they are. Ultimately, I suppose we wanted to create music that grabbed people. We don’t want to change their opinions or particularly make them think about anything. We just want to entertain.”

Employment is out now on B-Unique. Kaiser Chiefs play Oxegen on Saturday July 9.