Music Review | Kaiser Chiefs: Wit And Panache In The British Fashion, Without All That Grand-Gesture Rubbish

Boys and girls of New York City, Ricky Wilson said. You are familiar with our work? Or maybe it was a triumphant answer, not a leading question: You are familiar with our work! It could even have been a chiding reminder: You are familiar with our work — so act like it.

Ricky Wilson, of Kaiser Chiefs, played Roseland Ballroom.

Mr. Wilson is the lead singer of Kaiser Chiefs, a band from Leeds thats big in England and small in America, though big enough to sell out the Roseland Ballroom on Thursday night. Again and again, Mr. Wilson invited the audience to match his enthusiasm; again and again, the audience (led by a small but vocal contingent of British fans) more or less complied.

Like his band mates, Mr. Wilson seems like a clever, cheerful fellow, which is to say he seems very British indeed. Americans dont generally prize cleverness or good cheer in their rock stars, and so American rock stars are generally careful not to supply too much of it. To watch Mr. Wilson deliver gentle gibes from the stage (after a lackluster singalong, he said, I want to see a vast improvement on the next one) was to be reminded — pleasantly, perhaps — that even a mainstream British rock star can seem pretty weird on these shores.

Its not hard to see why Kaiser Chiefs have been so successful across the Atlantic. The bands breakthrough hit, I Predict a Riot, is a neat little blast of punk energy, cresting with a chorus scientifically engineered to make sweaty concertgoers jump up and down. The second Kaiser Chiefs album, Yours Truly, Angry Mob (Universal), released in America last month, is full of tidy little songs that borrow from British mod and punk; you can hear echoes of the Jam, the Damned and many others.

Tidy: thats one word that hardly ever describes Americas most popular bands; over here, you usually have to sound huge to become huge. This countrys best-selling rock acts typically aim for grandiosity: with howling power ballads; with emo concept albums; with Christian-inspired messages of hope; with semi-apocalyptic allegories. From Nine Inch Nails to Fall Out Boy to the Fray, Billboards rock charts are full of bands in love with bigness.

You could detect a strain of this American tendency on Thursday, during an opening set by the Walkmen, who combine slow-changing chord progressions with Dylan-in-overdrive vocals in hopes of achieving something sublime. Last year they released A Hundred Miles Off (Record Collection), which was something of a disappointment, but Thursdays uneven set provided a few glimpses of the band at its glorious best; one highlight was a ferocious version of Red River, from the forthcoming soundtrack to Spider-Man 3.

By contrast, Kaiser Chiefs just bounced along, by turns charming, glib and dully competent. In Everything Is Average Nowadays, Mr. Wilson plopped down on the lip of the stage just as he sang, Everyone is sitting on the fence. Through small gestures like this, he hopes to lure some more Americans off it.

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