Who can think of a better way to spend Valentine’s Day than with Mr Ricky Wilson and co at a Kaiser Chiefs homecoming gig?
February 14th 2015 saw the boys really come home in style with a sold out gig at the Leeds First Direct Arena, where they last played just months after its opening in 2013.
The boys took to the stage at 9pm with ‘Factory Gates’ from their latest album ‘Education, Education, Education & War’, before jumping in to a crowd pleasing set list which included favourites such as ‘Everyday I Love You Less & Less’, ‘Ruby’, ‘Modern Way’, and ‘I Predict A Riot’.
Being confined to a red spinning chair as a judge on BBC Talent show ‘The Voice’ hasn’t calmed Ricky down in the slightest as he spent the entire show throwing himself around the stage, throwing his microphone stand in the air, and ripping his shirt off as if it was the most inconvenient thing in the world. Ricky is a natural frontman with an incredible stage presence, and let’s not forget his crowd participation skills which he well and truly showed off. Half way through second album favourite ‘The Angry Mob’ Ricky disappeared from the stage and was seen only on the screens via a camera attached to his microphone, suddenly appearing on the tiniest ‘B Stage’ towards the back of the standing crowd, where he stayed for another ‘Education, Education, Education & War’ track ‘Canons’. If you’ve listened to ‘Canons’ then you’ll be familiar with the silence at the end of the track, followed by ‘The Occupation’, which is somewhat of a War poem read by actor Bill Nighy. After Bill Nighy’s role in the show, the band reemerged for another ‘Education, Education, Education & War’ track ‘Roses’, a slower track which was the perfect follow up.
As well as new tracks and hits, the boys played a few old album tracks such as ‘Employment’ track ‘Team Mate’, which Ricky heartwarmingly described to have been inspired by Leeds, as at the beginning of their careers they wrote about what was in front of them, which luckily was the one and only Leeds! Guitarist Whitey was given the choice to play any track by Ricky, and chose the 2006 ‘Lap of Honour’ EP track ‘Take My Temperature’, and the band honoured ‘The Who’ with a fantastic cover of ‘Pinball Wizard’.
When the band returned to the stage after their comeback single from ‘Education, Education, Education & War’ ‘Coming Home’ for their encore, Ricky told the crowd that the last time they played the Arena, they played ‘Coming Home’ as a new track that nobody knew, and now they were doing the same thing with new track ‘Falling Awake’, insisted that they’d win the crowd over with it. The band then played the song that shot them to success 10 years ago, ‘Oh My God’ , completely with Leeds United FC coloured confetti and streamers falling and shooting in to the crowd. If anybody knows how to come home in style, it’s the Kaiser Chiefs! Lucky for us we can expect more from the boys in the future as Ricky joked that they’d done alright as nobody had died in the last 10 years, so surely they’ll survive another.
