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The good news is that the pressure hasn’t cowed the band’s knack for effortlessly catchy pop songs - Yours Truly, Angry Mob features more hooks than the world’s greatest fisherman contest. There are jerky new wave riffs (‘Thank You Very Much’), delirious vocal swoops (‘Highroyds’) and at least one song that threatens to break into ‘Cool for Cats’ by Squeeze (‘Everything Is Average Nowadays’). Listening to this album is like shooting down a giant slide that only gets more exciting as it twists and turns to its climax.
The Yorkshire power-poppers also display an admirable willingness to broaden their range. 'Boxing Champ’ is a surprisingly tender folky lament and 'Love’s Not A Competition (But I’m Winning)' is a semi-acoustic, shoegazey ballad that shows a softer side to Ricky Wilson, the band’s boisterous frontman. Who’d have guessed that the Kaiser Chiefs might, ever so briefly, sound a bit like Lush?
But Yours Truly, Angry Mob has an Achilles heel – Wilson’s lyrics. Lead single ‘Ruby’ houses a chorus so huge that an appearance on Jo Whiley’s Live Lounge over the next couple of months is inevitable, but lyrics like “Due to lack of interest, tomorrow is cancelled” ensure that Wilson will never have Jarvis Cocker quaking in his Converse. Worse still, ‘The Angry Mob’ attempts to slay mindless Daily Mail readers with lines like, “We like who we like, we hate who we hate, but we’re oh so easily swayed”, but is completely undone by its playground chant structure. The very people Wilson wants to berate will love hollering along to its simplistic lyrics without stopping to think about what Wilson is trying to say.
So, ultimately, Yours Truly, Angry Mob is the scampish Labrador puppy of albums: likeable, energetic and undeniably rewarding to have in your life, but not terribly insightful.
