Single Review: Kasabian - 'Happenings'

Kasabian are, in my mind, the ultimate “festival bangers” band. At the height of their powers with tracks like ‘Club Foot’, ‘Fire’, ‘Underdog’ and many more, it seemed like they had a knack for knocking out super danceable rock grooves, infectious guitar lines, and catchy melodies begging to be chanted en masse in a big field. I might even put out the opinion that they’re just one of the best UK indie bands ever.

Unfortunately, after a series of troubling allegations, Tom Meighan was no longer the frontman, giving guitarist Serge Pizzorno full control. What resulted was 2022’s ‘The Alchemist’s Euphoria’, an album that, save one or two tracks, was a complete mess. Barely any of its experiments worked, the production was bad, and on top of it, came with quite a dislikable air of pretension. So, with news of their new album ‘Happenings’ dropping July 5th, they were in need of a bounceback, big time. Let’s look at the singles and see if they pull it off.

Call

Well I have to say this is a fair bit more successful than most of the stuff off TAE. The attempt at a festival dance-rock banger actually goes over fairly well. Some of the more electronic elements like some of the synth stabs or drum machine patches come across a little stilted or tacky, but for the most part the track is a lot of fun. The beats and bass are funky, the groove itself is super lively, and a lot of the synths and guitar leads have some really catchy melodies at their core, particularly on the chorus.

That brings me on to the vocals. Given that this is basically an EDM track in rock clothes, Serge just follows the assignment here, delivering simple, blunt, but catchy verse melodies, and a huge earworm vocal chant in the chorus. You can almost hear the Glastonbury crowd… That said, even though he does do what he needs to, I do wish that the vocals, as catchy as they are, were just a little more adventurous, or took a few more risks, that’s particularly true with the lyrics, that are honestly beyond Will.i.am levels of basic. “I love it when you call, ai-ai-ai-ayy”, that’s it? I get it’s a dance track but at least try to earn your salary.

Going back to the production briefly as well, I get that the track is supposed to be fun, and raucous, and loud, but sometimes there are so many elements in the mix blaring away at once that it can get quite irritating. Combine that with Serge’s constant use of a vocal distortion effect, and it gets to be a bit much. It’s not quite ‘ALYGATR’ levels of bad production, but they could’ve absolutely smoothed it out.

Despite nitpicks though, this track does its job fairly well. It’s lively, it’s catchy, it makes you want to dance. Somewhat of a return to form, you could say. It certainly isn’t perfect, but it is a vast improvement.

Coming Back To Me Good

If ‘Call’ strongly hinted that Kasabian had regained their mojo, this track fully confirms it. For starters, a lot of the music on it is fantastic. The band themselves described it as “a song for the summer”, and they were absolutely bang on. There’s a really cool, open hi-hat, live house style beat and understated, funky bassline pulsating through here, that obviously gives it a great sense of momentum.

They build on that incredibly well with these psychedelic washes of guitars that, as they say, just sound like summer. They are warm, romantic, but subtly melancholic too. The perfect combination. Additionally, the bridge is a nice moment too, with those catchy acoustic progressions working a treat, although I would say the beats and synths take away from the quantity a little bit, but it’s far from a major critique. It’s giving real Planet Funk ‘Chase The Sun’ vibes, which, believe me, is a positive.

With regard to Serge’s vocals and lyrics, performance wise, this feels a lot more solid than anything on the previous record, or even ‘Call’ for that matter. He operates with quite a standard mid 2000s-2010s indie vocalist delivery, but uses it very well. It’s equal parts catchy, emotive, yet also laid back, while still feeling very present. Think maybe Razorlight or Hard-Fi. I could say there’s even a very slight Verve thing going on. Point is, it works well. The verse manages to be highly hummable, while the chorus is, once again, characteristically anthemic, with those huge, sweeping melodies.

As I complained with ‘Call’ though, it does fall short on the lyrical front a bit. Now, I know Kasabian have never exactly been lyrical geniuses. After all, choruses like “get loose, get loose” or “I’m on fiiiiiiire” couldn’t have taken long. I get the message that the song is trying to communicate, that being lovers in a strained relationship saying “I know you feel a bit nervous right now but when you’re better, we can give this another go”, and it sounds like an interesting concept if done right. So, really I just wish Serge would flesh it out a little bit more. A few nuances, some details, rather than just the same verse and chorus over and over with a new line here or there.

A final, smaller critique, once again, comes with the production. Don’t get me wrong, I think the music itself sounds great, but because it’s going for such a huge, woozy sound, it can be a little washed out at certain junctures, particularly near the end with the double tracked guitar leads. At the end of the day though, this is a very strong single, and gave me a level of excitement I haven’t got from Kasabian material in quite a while.

Algorithms

To pick this song as the first single is a decision that boggles my mind honestly, precisely because it just feels like a blander variant of the two other tracks that followed. ‘Coming Back To Me Good’ was a really good piece of anthemic rock, and while I wasn’t head over heels in love with ‘Call’, it was definitely still catchy, and had a distinct, fiery flair to it. This just feels incredibly plain and boring by comparison.

The strummed acoustic progressions and clean guitars don’t sound bad by any means, and to get this out of the way now, the production on this track does sound a bit cleaner, which is nice. The problem is that the musical ideas going on just have a very generic, uplifting, kumbaya, campfire sing-along vibe to them that makes them feel a bit corny.

Much the same could be said for the orchestral elements they sprinkle onto the track. Again, they’re all certainly played competently enough, and they sound fine, but it feels like the addition of strings and pianos is very much a kind of cheap “ballad button” that bands press for the purpose of sounding more dramatic. Unfortunately, it sounds like that’s the case here.

Indeed, the transitions to a sort of quasi reggae-rock instrumental in the second verse does give it a fairly decent, quaint, pop-rock-y kind of energy, but it certainly doesn’t help with the corniness. Neither do the slightly irritating backing vocals for that matter. As for the vocals and lyrics, I hate to sound like a broken record, but it really is the same old story. Serge’s melodies on the whole are quite catchy, and the chorus does have another one of those big, group festival vibes going on, but god it feels saccharine.

If the music wasn’t already unhelpful enough in that department, the lyrics drive it home, and not in a good way. Not only is it pretty underwritten, like both other songs so far, aside from the bridge which does admittedly change it up a bit, but the lyrics themselves border on kind of silly. Obviously with the rise of AI, a lot of people’s response is to get rightfully anxious about their futures. So it makes me laugh a little bit that Kasabian’s response is to write a song essentially going, “hey guys, yeah the robots are coming, but one thing we have that they don’t is emotions. Humans can feel things. Isn’t that cool?”

It seems like it’s almost uncannily desperate to be some kind of world-uniting, “we are one” FIFA anthem. Emotions are obviously important, but when you consider the imminent destruction they hint at vicariously in the track, it’s essentially the equivalent of bragging that you can still eat chocolate cake while your village is burning down around you. A bit of a weird analogy, but hopefully you get what I mean.

In summary, do I think this will be an all-time classic Kasabian record? Not really no, because I think there’s just too many little critiques for me to be THAT optimistic. That said, to answer my earlier question of whether they will bounce back from ‘The Alchemist’s Euphoria’ with this LP, for the most part, I would say so. Dare I say I’m actually quite looking forward to it, even.

‘Happenings’ is out on July 5th via Columbia Recordings. Pre-order it here. The band will also be holding a ‘Summer Solstice II’ gig at Victoria Park in Leicester on July 6th, Find tickets here.

See the artwork and track list for ‘Happenings’ below

Happenings