Off With Their Heads

It's not all great--'You Want History' can't overcome rhyming "mystery" with "history" or its leaden coda, for example--but it is at least as good as their debut, if not just a tick better for its relative dynamic and tonal variety.

This is regal, majestic pop music played with a roundheaded bluntness. Off with their heads indeed.

Its first half is genuinely brimming with energy in a way that promises a return to the joyful pop of the Kaisers Chiefs’ debut. It does, however, tail off badly.

Off With Their Heads deftest creations may fall just short of the Kasier Chief debut's ruddy-faced string of exhuberant big hitters, 'Never Beat A Beat,' 'Addicted To Drugs' and the huge 'Like You Too Much' are still sizeable cut above some of "Yours Truely's" tepid misfires. [Nov 2008, p.104]

Off With Their Heads affirms the undying pleasures of smart, catchy pop music does well. [Oct 2008, p.137]

Half-knowing, half-full of anthems and lyrically halfway to hell, Off With Their Heads is musically halfway there. Kaisers have barely missed a beat on the highway to massive-dom, but they’re hardly raising our heart rates.

Off With Their Heads is great British pop in the dynamic lethal-irony tradition of the mid-Sixties Kinks, the early Jam and, with that vintage-New Wave tone of Nick Baines' keyboards, XTC's 1979 album, "Drums and Wires."

Erratic songwriting is evident from start to finish on the record.

Yet with all the marquee involvement, Heads doesn’t have the obvious single choices. The Kaisers could have worked with just about anyone and ended up with an album that would have been comparable--and probably cost a lot less to make. [Year End 2008]

Off With Their Heads is more football chant schmindie, with only the briefest of diversions up Psycho Rock Avenue.

These trebly, trenchant Brits have truly gone pear-shaped.

Both anxious and anthemic, the third most famous band from Leeds, England (behind Gang of Four and the Mekons) lobs social commentary as sharp as drummer Nick Hodgson’s ties, and tackles subjects as brainy as evolutionary biology ('Like It Too Much,'), the tenets of self-help ('Tomato In the Rain') and gender politics ('Remember You’re A Girl'), all at breakneck speed.

Singer Ricky Wilson holds it together with his charismatic personality, demanding you sit up and listen the second he opens his mouth to kick things off. [Dec 2008, p.146]

Ronson lowers Ricky Wilson’s maddeningly limited vocals and amps the bass, but the disc still fails to come alive.

The hurtling, new wave keyboard rush of 'Never Miss a Beat,' the pop-radio swirl of 'Like It Too Much,' and the casually brilliant bass-bounce of 'Good Days Bad Days' prove the band still has more than enough hooks, and brash charm, to get it through even the longest of songwriting winters.

Off With Their Heads is, thankfully, a subtler, cannier beast, even if it does suffer from some of the same problems as its predecessor.

Beyond a couple of guest-vocal spots from fellow Ronson client Lily Allen and an out-of-place rap from English MC Sway, Off with Their Heads covers pretty much the same territory as the Chiefs' first two discs.

Mostly band and producer Mark Ronson have done what both parties needed to do in late 2008: avoid the ordinary and obvious, namely glossy stadium-indie and retro-soul horns respectively, and aim for the extraordinary.