Kasabian - Goodbye Kiss

Kasabian's previous single Re-Wired felt like a miss-step. For all that it played to the band's traditional formula, it lacked the pizazz and sheer 'Bang!' of their so far unsullied back-catalogue of fantastic singles. Kasabian were a band that built their career on consistency and never-relenting pace - their albums characterised by heady concoctions of energy and cocky swagger.

So for Goodbye Kiss, the third single to be taken from Velociraptor! they turn away from their usual path to embrace an Echo & The Bunnymen kind of pensive broodiness. But where those 80s greats had the songwriting chops and peerless command of great melodies to make such stuff work, here Kasabian just sound spent.

We buy into Kasabian for blinding big beat electronica-laced psychedelic-rock, not mellow acoustic ballads like this. If your girlfriend happens to be a Kasabian fan and you fancied some tuneful mood-music to set the tone for a romantic evening, Goodbye Kiss would be perfect - but then, that's not the majority of us.

It's a shame, because in Kasabian, we have one of the last great bands from the 2004 outburst of British rock - where all others have already begun to lose steam, they remained ploughing along at full-speed. But in the likes of Goodbye Kiss, even their time at the top seems numbered.

Goodbye Kiss is released on the 20th February.

Kasabian - Re-Wired

Of all the assorted bands to launch from the swirling maelstrom that was the 2004 UK music scene into the bright spotlights of fame, Kasabian always struck me as the most consistent, the most aware of their craft and the continual creation of songs so replete in mass-appeal that there was never really any doubt they'd ever fade.

Until now, that is. Re-Wired is a sort of first, anxious stumble into that dangerous slope of 'the average' - something Kasabian for so long made a career out of being the polar opposite to. When all around them cloned indie groups were penning the same old drawn-out tunes, Kasabian were infinitely bigger, bolder.

There's a touch of U2's Achtung Baby album to the rough, industrial-scale percussion and the scratchy guitars. Kasabian have always been ones for interesting, involving sonic landscapes, and Re-Wired is certainly not one to break tradition. But the sense of indelible choruses that made that album such a classic, and which previously marked out the stepping stones of Kasabian's discography (Club Foot, LSF, Fire...) - they're gone.

With the Stone Roses reformed - one of Kasabian's most hallowed of idols and influences - the pressure is on. Days Are Forgotten - with its Morricone styled majesty - proved the band definitely still 'had it', so why such a faltering here?

Re-Wired is released on the 21st of November.