SUNDAY TELEGRAPH(LONDON)
September 05, 2004, Sunday
Rock CDs
By James Delingpole
Kasabian Kasabian (RCA, pounds 12.99). Leicester’s Kasabian think
they’re the new guardians of British rock ‘n’ roll. ‘The Stones,
Zeppelin, the Pistols, the Gallaghers, we’re in that line,’ says
their singer Tom, and the damnedest thing is he might just be right:
not since Oasis can I recall a debut of quite such magnificent verve
and swagger.
They’re not as tight or clever as Franz Ferdinand, but then that’s
not their point: Kasabian (named after Charles Manson’s female getaway
driver – her surname means ‘butcher’ in Armenian) represent the bummed,
druggy, louche end of rock. It’s impossible to play them without
wanting to load up on drink and drugs and spend all night dancing,
which is what apparently goes on quite a lot on the 600-acre farm
where they live, record and throw free festivals.
They’ve got the cocky slouchiness and shuffling dance beat of the Happy
Mondays, the psychedelic languor of the Stone Roses, the attitude of
Oasis, the anthemic danciness of Stereo MCs. Who would have imagined
that the early 1990s would have made a comeback quite so soon and so
brilliantly reinvented? Truly Kasabian are the hound’s testicles.
The Libertines The Libertines (Rough Trade, pounds 13.99). In a
survey last year of the greatest British pop bands, the Guardian
decided The Libertines were even better than Radiohead and put them
at number one. I’m not sure I’d go quite so far – can I ever imagine
myself going: ‘God, I just have to put on a Libertines record right
this second, or I’ll die’?
No – but their second album does give you a good idea what the fuss
is all about. It’s excruciatingly honest – detailing the break-up of
the fraught, intense, almost marital relationship between frontmen
Carl Barat and heroin-addicted Pete Doherty. It has the throwaway
assurance of a band that knows it’s great and original and doesn’t
need to prove anything to anyone, and a sweet, eccentric, ramshackle
English charm. As produced by Mick Jones it sounds a bit sludgy and
home-made, but the heartfelt lyrics are compulsive and the debonairly
punkish melodies do grow on you.
Skinnyman Council Estate of the Mind (Low Life, pounds 13.99). You
wouldn’t guess it from his authentically black-sounding patois, but the
much-praised north London rapper Skinnyman is in fact white. His tunes
and samples aren’t bad but is he the British Eminem? Not lyrically
deft enough and way too earnest. Another Streets? Not funny enough.