Introduction

After 16 years together, Kaiser Chiefs have just unveiled Souvenir, their singles collection. We caught up from Peanut from the band to discuss career highlights, Adele’s record sales and why rock n roll has “lost its way”...

Questions and answers

Hello, what are you up to today?

I’m actually at home in my flat in London on a rare day off. It’s all been “life admin”, I think they call it. There’s a stack of post that is just depressing to look at. (Laughs)

So, you’re releasing your singles collection: it’s quite a landmark in your career. Why now? Is it because you felt you’d amassed enough hits or is it symptomatic of you beginning a new chapter?

I think a bit of both. It kind of snuck up on us: we were just trying to write a set list once and we were like, “Right, let’s write down all the singles and then we’ll write down the other songs that we like playing live.” And we realised it was a pretty good list. You don’t want to be one of those bands that release a singles collection without an album’s worth of hits. We’re in quite a fortunate position where we’ve had songs like ‘Ruby’ and ‘Oh My God’ that were massive radio singles, and we genuinely feel that we’ve got enough hits to put a collection out. It’s a decent chunk of our career and it shows our musical development.

Obviously, your situation is a lot more comfortable now than it was when you started out. What is it that still motivates you to make records? Is it the same thing that motivated you when you started out?

Funnily enough, I think it is, yeah. When we started out we were really conscious about how we performed live, because the best thing you can do when you’re a support band is to have more people talking about you than the headliners when they leave the gig. I mean, ultimately, you want to steal the headliners’ fans. And I think the motivation now is still to try and turn heads, y’know? We put a lot into our songs and our stage show but we also get a lot back from the crowd. And I think that it’s that connection with the audience that we still love today, as much as we did when we were playing to 50 people in a pub in Leeds.

Ok, so can you pick out your personal favourite track in the collection?

Well, we have two new songs on the record and another part of the reason for putting out Souvenir was that we felt like they were good enough to put out. And because record labels are scared of people nowadays, you’ve always got to put something slightly new on a singles collection or greatest hits. So we had ‘Listen To Your Head’ and ‘On The Run’ and the feedback from everyone close to us was, “That’s really good, you’ve got to get it out there.”

I think ‘On The Run’ has a lot of the energy of our first record in it and I think ‘Listen To Your Head’ is a massive tune. We’re really looking forward to playing it in the summer because it’s just got a great, sing-along chorus that feels very raw and primal.

What were your inspirations for the new songs?

With our last album, The Future is Medieval, we’d explored a lot musically and realised that we liked very energetic, post-punk-y kind of songs, like ‘Problem Solved’. So writing ‘Listen To Your Head’ was almost like we were trying to reign in all the successful bits of our songs, working out what it is that people like in them. And there’s no doubt about it, people like it when we launch into that big chorus, and ‘Listen To Your Head’ is a celebration of that.

Would you describe yourself as people-pleasers, then?

Yeah. We’re simply not the kind of band who are going to go, “We’re not playing ‘Ruby’ or ‘I Predict A Riot’ tonight, we’re in a mood” or something. We know what people have come to our show to see and we know what it is we’re good at, so why wouldn’t you give people that? The euphoric response that we get from our fans is still one of the best things to see. Y’know, you look out into the crowd and you literally see them waiting for that chorus, because it’s building up, and then it hits and there’s pints and people and shoes in the air. It feels great.

You worked with producer Stephen Street on ‘On The Run’, for the first time since Yours Truly, Angry Mob. Why?

The bands that Stephen’s famous for working with, he worked with on every album for a number of years, for a large chunk of their career. And it’s quite interesting going back to Stephen after we’ve been with other producers, experienced other things and been on huge tours.

Sometimes people just jump into your mind and, with the rhythm and that keyboard riff at the beginning, it was like, “You know what? Stephen would do a really good job of that.” It really needed that tight, slightly more poppy production. We went into British Grove Studios down in Chiswick and within two or three days it was all done. I think, with that energy, ‘On The Run’ might be the musical direction we go in next.

The whole bespoke download thing you did with The Future Is Medieval was obviously pretty revolutionary. What did you hope to achieve with it and did you feel that the attention it got detracted from the music?

Well, a lot had changed in the time we took off from the end of 2009 to mid-2011. Social media had exploded. Now it seems everyone thinks they’re entitled to everything now and releasing a good album almost doesn’t feel like it’s enough anymore. And, having had nearly two years off, we felt like we’d be underplaying ourselves to be back without something special.

Our main aim was to show that there was another way of releasing music that involved the fans, and that involved a little bit of pride in actually owning the product of “the record”. So you could choose your own songs, and put them in any order you wanted, and the artwork was your design... We felt like the art form of making an album had been forgotten and an album is still a good wrapper for music: putting 10 songs on a CD or vinyl or tape. And there’s something about the fact the band’s obviously put a lot of thought into the packaging and the artwork. That matters a lot, especially to us. So we were trying to bring a bit of that pride and passion of owning a record collection into the digital age. We wanted to show people that you should be proud of your digital musical collection as well.

But yeah, looking back, the idea obviously got a phenomenal amount of press and, in all honesty, it does feel like the album has been totally forgotten, which is a shame. It was very much a learning curve for us and, to be honest, I’m still not quite sure what we achieved or what we didn’t achieve.

If you could offer new bands one piece of advice, what would it be?

I think the main thing is your songs in the first place, y’know? When we were looking for a record deal, we went to labels (that I won’t mention) with ‘Oh My God’, ‘Modern Way’, ‘Everyday I Love You Less and Less’ and ‘Saturday Night’ on a demo. And then somebody came to the gig and saw seven songs, including those four, and said, “There’s not enough singles”. Well, the first three songs were all top ten singles so it shows that you do need the songs.

People say that’s the old era of music, with people like Franz Ferdinand and The Killers in the charts, but that isn’t the old era, it’s just that the new era is a little bit rubbish really. I mean, look at Adele: Adele sells millions of records but there aren’t many guitar bands selling records at the moment. Unfortunately, in the music industry nowadays, I think a lot of people have the attitude of, “I’m brilliant, I’ve got cool hair, I’ve got one good song: let’s go find a record deal for 200 grand.” And then you never hear from them again. And I think that’s a shame because music is an art form and it’s been mangled into something that’s not very pleasant at the moment.

I think, ultimately, a lot of bands still start with kids playing covers in their bedroom, like I did, playing Guns n Roses and Nirvana songs. And that’s still how it should work; that’s still rock n roll, it’s just lost its way a little bit. So what I hope for is a wave of angry kids who’ve discovered the Beatles and The Kinks and Pink Floyd, or whatever’s in their dad’s record collection, who pick up guitars and bring on the next wave of British guitar music. That’s what usually happens isn’t it? It’s a reaction to the pop shite that’s in the charts at the moment.

So what has been your favourite record of the past twelve months?

Well the other day I got The Cribs’ new record, and I’d recommend that. But through the magic of Twitter, I also heard a brilliant artist called Public Service Broadcasting. They use lots of war cabinet/WWII samples and speeches and things but with really cool synths and guitars.

With the release of Souvenir, it seems a good time to take stock of things. So what’s been the strangest moment in your career so far?

When it all took off in 2005, we got asked to support the Foo Fighters. And when we walked into the dressing room on the first date of the tour Dave Grohl was just sat there talking to the guys, y’know, like “How you doin’?” And I’m like, “Ok, that’s Dave Grohl...” Nirvana were a massive influence on me; I bought every limited edition vinyl, watched every VHS, read every magazine article just to find an interview with Nirvana. . And so you realise that now you know Dave Grohl and that feels strange. It still does. But it was a great moment and moments like that make you take stock and make you wanna keep doing this, y’know? We’ve been very lucky in our career; we’ve met a lot of people and made a lot of friends.

Are there any other heroes that you’d still like to meet?

Well, I’ve just seen that The Beach Boys are playing at Wembley Arena... Meeting any of The Beach Boys would be quite a thing. We’ve met Paul McCartney and that’s pretty cool. We’ve never met Ringo, he’s been quite elusive...

He’s too busy doing ‘Thomas the Tank Engine’...

Well exactly, yeah. I think my little nephew would explode if I actually told him I had met the voice of ‘Thomas The Tank Engine’. (Laughs) But all these sort of things: you meet Brian May and he’s like, “I really like your music,” and you’re like, “Really? Cool.” (Laughs) And going to award shows becomes normal and it’s only when people like you ask these questions that you take stock. Yesterday we filmed a chat show and Kylie was on there too and she comes and says hi. Is that normal?! I don’t know. It feels normal now but it probably isn’t to most people!

Do you have any regrets?

Nah, we’re too in the middle of it all to have regrets: it’s all going great. I’ve probably worn a few bad shirts, said a few stupid things, but I don’t think you really regret those. (Laughs) I can’t really regret anything because I think anyone would gladly have taken my place.

What would you still like to achieve?

I don’t know really. To get the amount of press that Adele’s got maybe?! (Laughs) Without touring. Yeah, that’d be it: have the amount of record sales that Adele’s had, with the amount of touring that she’s done, which is approximately zero.

You said you liked touring!

Yeah we like it but when you only come home for a few days a month... No, no, we definitely like it! But I reckon that Adele is laughing at the moment, isn’t she? She’s having a good time.