Velociraptor!

Of all the lazy, inaccurate ideas people have about Kasabian, the most absurd is that they are spiritual heirs to Oasis. For sure, singer Tom Meighan has a distinctly Gallagher-esque swagger and both acts are blessed/cursed with a lager-spewing football hooligan fan-base. Musically, however, they inhabit completely different realities. Where Oasis’ songbook was comprised of the reheated dribblings of the Stones, Beatles, Kinks et al, Kasabian’s offers tinges of outsider weirdness, something their pint-tossing following has never been able to completely obscure.
Still, it wasn’t until 2009’s concept-heavy West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum that the English east-midlanders really got the message out there. A rumination on the relationship between art and madness, the record confirmed what should have been perfectly obvious all along if only we’d been listening properly – far from another bunch of dreary Britrockers, Kasabian were in the lairy British tradition of dance/rock fusionists, a movement that goes at least as far back as Happy Mondays, Stone Roses and Primal Scream. Genuinely ambitious, West Ryder stomped from psychedelia to big-beat to ‘70s classic rock (as well as delivering a chilling foreshadowing of the London riots in ‘Where Did All The Love Go’) and was duly nominated for a Mercury, an honour that appeared only to deepen the enmity of the haters.

Two years on, with most of the band the far side of 30 and new parents, Meighan and song-writing wing-man Serge Pizzorno return with a teary glimmer in their eyes. Having essentially conquered the world last time, they are in a mood for reflection, as demonstrated by melancholic opener ‘Let’s Roll Like We Used To’ (the title is the closest the record comes to an Oasis moment). It’s an affecting contemplation of their childhood years in Leicester – or at least that’s the case until halfway through when the song erupts into a plugged-in monster with a riff nabbed from Led Zeppelin’s ‘Kashmir’. Rocking sensitively is a delicate art. Done incorrectly there’s a danger of things going all Stereophonics. But Kasabian know they’re up there on a tightrope and their balance never wavers.

They can pull off an out-of-body sugar-rush too, as on the charismatic ‘La Fée Verte’. Starting as a drowsy ‘70s Stones pastiche, it blossoms into a baggy-era strummalong, Meighan’s Lennon-esque warble backed by an incongruous swell of mariachi horns. The chorus, when it finally arrives, is one of the best moments you’ll encounter all year. Even better is the funk-mediated ‘Re-Wired’, which starts off sounding like Gorillaz, then segues into Technique-era New Order, before slamming you in the back of the head with a spewing volcano of a hook.
Sometimes, admittedly, the big beats teeter toward Prodigy parody, as on the giveaway single ‘Switchblade Smiles’, during which you imagine Meighan donning novelty contact lenses and baring his teeth. A far more successful synthesis of propulsion and melody is the title-track, which, sorry to be obvious, really is a lumbering dinosaur of a song that sweeps all before it (yes, yes... we know Velociraptors were fleet-footed members of the Deinonychus family).

Ultimately, Velociraptor!, produced by regular collaborator Dan The Automator, is more holding manoeuvre than frontal assault and it’s hard to imagine it winning over those who, despite all the evidence to the contrary, continues to dismiss Kasabian as one-dimensional lad-rockers. For anyone who thought the biggest flaw of West Ryder was that it ended so soon, however, it’s an album with plenty to recommend. Onwards and upwards – the next stop, you suspect, is Muse-scale hugeness. Stand back and hear them roar.