This series of The Voice may be over, but for Kaiser Chiefs’ Ricky Wilson life just keeps getting busier.
Their new album is a far cry from the way things seemed after their third album, Off With Their Heads, in 2008.
The sort of guitar music they made was, by then, unfashionable. Then in 2012, when promoting their Best of compilation Souvenir, drummer Nick Hodgson announced he was leaving.
The instant reaction outside the band was that they were finished without his writing talent.
“There was a time when I thought it was over,” admits Ricky.
“The four of us were in a dressing room and I said, ‘Well, I want to carry on, do you?’
“And then it was like: ‘Oh you do? Well I do. And what about you?’. It turned out we all did but just hadn’t said it out loud.
“If one of us had not wanted to, then we’d have called it a day and done something else, but it was a group decision.”
The band had to step up to writing songs pretty sharpish, and wrote a barrowload before finding any they were happy with.
When they had enough and recruited new drummer, Vijay Mistry they went to Atlanta, Georgia, to record with producer Ben H. Allen.
One of his main roles was encouraging them to show off more while recording.
“We were being quite British about it,” says Ricky. “But if you’ve written these great songs, with all these cool guitar parts and things, why bottle it when you get in the studio and underplay it?
“I don’t want it to sound like we’re doing him down, or what he did for the band, but Nick leaving was the best thing that could’ve happened to us,” says Ricky.
“We were put in the position where we had to fight for the band again. It wasn’t until things were shaken up that we realised how important it was to us.”
Kaiser Chiefs’ new album Education, Education, Education & War is out now.
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