Yours Truly, Angry Mob
- Kaiser Chiefs
- Band Name: Kaiser Chiefs
- Record Label: Universal
- Release Date: Mar 27, 2007
- Critic Score
- Most active
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80An album full of jukebox hits. [Mar 2007, p.98]
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80Their second album manages to be full of surprises, while never straying too far from what you'd expect. [Mar 2007, p.80]
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80Angry Mob delivers 13 consistently catchy tracks that bounce unrelentingly. [Apr 2007, p.115]
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80On Yours Truly, Angry Mob, Kaiser Chiefs grow up, dig in and get utterly serious, albeit in a pogo-hopping, decadent British way. [Apr 2007, p.105]
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80This is serious fun. [Mar 2007, p.106]
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80Call this album their application for recognition as one of the decade's major UK bands.
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It starts out inchoate and hard to put your finger on, then coalesces into something wiry and unshakable.
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'Yours Truly...' is a rip-roaring pop record - sprightly, lean and adventurous - a bold leap skyward from 'Employment'.
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Where Employment featured lazy, loping grooves perfect for sing-alongs in clubs, YTAM showcases muscular power-chord guitar rockers that will make for great drunken shout-alongs in arenas. [#17, p.92]
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70With such sharp detail, Kaiser Chiefs have elevated themselves from a singles band to a group that's capable of both having a laugh and making a focused statement about life's less gleeful side. [Apr 2007, p.92]
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70Like last time, the singles are better than the whole. [31 Mar 2007]
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70Although the tunes have plenty of vigour and aggression, as with Employment, Britpop veterans will feel more than a little sense of deja vu.
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The familiarity is comforting, but nothing here will make you jump up on the bar and headbutt a stranger. [30 Mar 2007, p.71]
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As Blur, Morrissey, and even Oasis learned the hard way, engaging in parochial social criticism - as much of Yours Truly does with its references to youth clubs and housing estates - doesn't connect with more than a cult of Anglophiles here in the US.
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Yours Truly, Angry Mob is one of the catchier guitar records you'll hear all year... But the Kaiser Chiefs can also be a little shallow.
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60Like its predecessor, the Kaisers' second album is patchy, but does have moments of brilliance.
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60As on Employment, some songs spark with energy and others die in the first verse. Is a complete album asking too much?
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60Ultimately Yours Truly, Angry Mob is, if nothing else, predictable.
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50The central flaw of Mob-- and it's a profound one-- is that its attempt to refine Employment's boundless levels of boyish vigor with introspection and intellect comes across as tired and bored.
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Wilson's fake tales of Middle England lack the sharp observational focus of the Arctic Monkeys, the bratty cleverness of Blur circa Parklife or even the sexy swagger of Franz Ferdinand. [May 2007, p.61]
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They're the English equivalent of Fountains of Wayne.
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A sophomore effort that rarely rises above middling.
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Kaiser Chiefs scramble to reclaim ground already won, sticking with lazily hooky songs sporting overcranked arrangements. The result? Charmless fare like the bombastic UK hit single "Ruby," and loutish lad-rock like "Thank You Very Much" and "My Kind Of Guy," which sound simultaneously pushy and forgettable.
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40The melodies feel functional at best, surprisingly charmless affairs that push all the right buttons with little passion or joy, while the lyrics are that depressing rock cliche: woe-is-me deliberations on the pressures of fame.
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Caught between essentially meaningless singalongs and trying to actually mean something, what you get is average power-pop with crass attempts at poetry.
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The sad thing is that while nobody expects Kaiser Chiefs to be re-inventing the wheel, we do expect a pretty rock-solid, perfect pop record. Yours Truly, Angry Mob most definitely isn't rock solid or perfect in any sense.
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30Yours Truly, Angry Mob is such a sloppily put-together album that it almost seems intentionally bad.
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20Kaiser Chiefs have absolutely no talent or taste for innovation.
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There's simply no charm or subtlety on show here, and not even any cheeky, bona fide pop thrills in the vein of "Everyday I Love You Less & Less."
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 19 out of 25
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Mixed: 3 out of 25
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Negative: 3 out of 25
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GarrettJ.3With the title track and Ruby the only redeeming features, this album disappointed me.
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TonyS.10Brilliant album. Great follow up. A real grower and as good as if not better than Employment.