Feature Hail to the Chiefs

A new venue opens to a glorious fanfare from local heroes Kaiser Chiefs

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It was something of a monumental night in the history of Leeds music. Leeds finally has a big music venue, and a damn good one, at that, and the Kaiser Chiefs are back in the city, giving us Loiners the first chance to listen to tracks from their new album.

All in all, that’s pretty impressive.

First things first, the Leeds Academy. The 2,300 capacity venue is looking very impressive indeed. Essentially, the old Coliseum building is back to how many Loiners would remember the Town and Country Club. But better. The fancy new building has bars aplenty, a fantastic soundsystem and massive lighting rigs. It’s quite odd walking into a venue quite as shimmering, clean, and, well, new, as the Academy.

Musically, the night started off with local lads The Hair, who were lucky enough to be the first band ever to play the Academy stage. Playing a cowbell driven, dancefloor-friendly take on indie rock, it’s easy to draw comparisons to fellow Leeds lads The Sunshine Underground, but if you like your guitars served up with a beat-driven edge, then there’s some good dancin’ to be done to these lads.

The big draw, though, was our returning heroes Kaiser Chiefs playing a venue a fraction of the size of the kind they’re used to playing on these shores. Opening with new song ‘Spanish Metal’, the Chiefs were clearly in confident mood as they played three new songs back-to-back - including new single ‘Never Miss A Beat’ - before launching into old classic ‘Everyday I Love You Less and Less’.

It barely needs reporting that the home crowd lapped up the Chiefs’ performance, serenading the bands with chants of “Yorkshire! Yorkshire!” and even a rendition of the Leeds United anthem ‘Marching On Together’. Feeding off the crowd, frontman Ricky Wilson was in fine form, leaping around the stage and even risking a climb up the venue’s lighting rig.

The new material was sounding good, not straying very far from the band’s usual sound, but perhaps a little more upbeat than some of the material on Yours Truly, Angry Mob, but it was the inevitable ‘Oh My God’ and set closer ‘I Predict A Riot’ that really sparked the crowds off and even had the usually seated balcony bopping around.

In terms of winning over the city, The Academy could hardly have done anymore. The launch night went without a hitch and in bringing the city’s favourite sons to what was once, and can now again be, a classic venue they’ve showed just what calibre of acts we can expect here from now on.
Kaiser Chiefs opened the Leeds Academy on 8 October

Posted on Tuesday 28th October 2008
TG

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