Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Kasabian - 48:13 album review


The album cover for 48:13 is pretty simple.  It's hot pink, says "Kasabian" at the top, and then features a list of times (in the case, song lengths), which add to the album's run time of 48:13.

Seems very straightforward.  But it's actually more revealing than you'd think at first glance.  You see, the act of reducing songs to an interchangeable set of digits is a bit like how the album sounds - a largely by-the-numbers effort from a band that has delivered a lot more on albums like their self-titled debut and West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum.

It's interesting at times.  This is a big improvement on its rather bland predecessor Velociraptor!, which frankly was a blatant abuse of an album title befitting a far more incisive record.  The first two real tracks, Bumblebeee and Stevie both feature wicked, loping grooves and a bombastic chorus.  And then there's Clouds, one of the most obscenely bouncy and infectious tracks Kasabian have written - in the vein of tracks like Empire and Fire.

The problem is, there's a bunch of interludes, and a number of other wholly unremarkable tracks that could probably have appeared on almost any Kasabian album in the past decade - and most likely would've been regarded as filler on any of those records too.

The end result is an underwhelming album which is probably one or two tracks short of being a very good EP.  Not their best work.

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