Kasabian have shared their bombastic new single ‘Call’ and announced details of their 8th album ‘Happenings’. Check it out below, along with our interview with frontman Serge Pizzorno.
The Leicester indie veterans first shared that the “psychedelic” new album of “big hitters” was on the way last year when they announced details of a huge homecoming gig in the form of Summer Solstice II – a return to Victoria Park on Saturday July 6 after previously playing an outdoor gig there back in 2014.
Now, they’ve announced that ‘Happenings’ will arrive the day before as well as sharing the dance-driven new single ‘Call’ and the daredevil music video. Shot by director duo Waxxwork, the video is centred around a phone falling out of a plane and hurtling through the sky – having been shot in Albania where aerospace laws would allow sky-divers to out of a helicopter with the video playing in real time.
The follow-up to 2022’s ‘The Alchemist’s Euphoria’ and their second since the exit of Tom Meighan comes at 10 tracks long, clocking in at just 26 minutes (“A minute shorter than the Ramones’ debut,” as Pizzorno explained), and was written at the musician’s home studio The Sergery completing work with co-producer Mark Ralph (Zara Larsson, Clean Bandit, Rudimental).
Check out our interview with Pizzorno below, with the frontman explaining what to expect from the record 20 years after their debut album, why they threw people out of a plane, and how you just need to “send up the fucking bat signal” for them to smash a festival near you.
Hello Serge. What made you choose ‘Call’ as the single to come back with?
Pizzorno: “It was the first thing that went down. I had the riff towards the end of the last record. Certain riffs talk to you, and I was like, ‘Yes, there’s something special in this’. It informed how the whole record was going to be – these super tight, big tunes. It always felt like the first thing people should hear from the album. It’s such a unique tune. At the start of an album campaign, to have something that can only be Kasabian is important. I don’t really know what is, but I do feel like it just has those drops that will just go off in a live environment. Let’s start the year with a tune that gets everyone excited for the summer.”
It certainly has ‘Ibiza’ vibes…
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“I love that Balearic switch-up in the second half of the song. It’s really quite funky at the start, then it goes floaty and takes you somewhere else. It still bangs, but you’re like, ‘Holy shit, now I’m floating away’. In a really short space of time, it takes you a journey which is really fucking cool.”
Lyrically, what were you aiming for with ‘Call’?
“It’s down the Iggy Pop sentiment that songs should be super simple, say one thing, and say it in as few words as possible. It’s about that one person who makes the call, and then you’re ready. It’s like the fucking batphone; or, ‘A festival needs some headliners, send up the fucking bat signal’. BANG, Kasabian, there we are. It’s basically saying, ‘It’s great when you’re around’. Energy charges.”
And the video is pretty bold. Surely you could have done it with AI these days instead of flying to Albania and throwing someone out of a plane?
“The concept around ‘Happenings’ is to bring art out into the real world. We could have just done a video on a green screen or whatever but we thought, ‘No, let’s go to Albania and figure out how we get this phone to fly through the air, land, and shoot the video all live and fed to the phone’.
“I like it when you don’t really know what might happen. That’s why we show the process at the end, so you’re like, ‘Oh shit, they actually did that’. Even when you go see puppets and the people controlling them, that’s always way more exciting than CGI. There’s something way more magical films about those ‘80s films, even when you know they’re puppets.”
Will we be seeing those Kasabian bobbleheads on the merch stand at gigs this summer?
“That is my ‘Big in 2024 prediction’: bobbleheads are back in full effect!”
What can you tell us about the sounds mined on the rest of the album?
“It’s very much an album that can only be made today. The influences are there, but it’s been made with the tools that I have around me now. It’s a really simple sentiment. Every section has to be a chorus and demand attention for the whole album. It’s relentless in its course. I was always trying to make guitar music interesting. I don’t even know what you’d call our band. Are we a rock band? This time I was really into pop structure and making everything super clean and punchy – taking those kooky, crazy, weird sounds and making them hit like a modern record.
“Every track has its own world. The track ‘Bird In A Cage’ has a Trent Reznor thing going on, has a Britney Spears thing going on, has a Beatles thing going on, has a Prince thing going on, then ‘Hell Of It’ has a J Dilla meets Justin Timberlake/Timbaland 2002 thing, then it goes into Parliament and Funkadelic, plus there’s some 1970s Nigerian funk.”
But it’s not a free-for-all – the album is very focussed and to-the-point…
“The rules were the same for each track: to keep it tight and around three minutes. You know if you’ve got the greatest crack team of bank robbers in the world, right? The best guy with explosives, the best guy with maps, all that assembled. They plan the heist, they get in, they get out, bang, they get away with no police chase or anything. Before anyone knows it, the diamonds are gone – that is this record. It’s a well-executed bank heist. We’re in, we’re out, we’re done, and you’re left going, ‘Holy shit, how the fuck did they do that?’ I don’t know myself!”
And it should be easy to get the new songs in the setlist if they’re so short?
“Exactly. In between huge gigs we’d come home and ask, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a song like this?’ I’ve never really written on tour, so that was nice. That informed how the music was made. I really enjoyed that process and it made a lot of sense.”
Looking at the artwork, we’re guessing the aesthetic of this era is a party vibe. What will the upcoming gigs look like?
“‘Happenings’ is a concept so there will be some surprises from stage. Certainly, the aesthetic is from Oz Magazine and early punk zines. There’s a lot of that mixed with the cheekiness of the band. The gigs will be pure joy, as this album is a celebration of sorts. It’s all about everyone coming together and having a fucking good time.”
Kasabian release ‘Happenings’ on July 5. Check out the full tracklist below, and pre-order the album here.
‘Darkest Lullaby’
‘Call’
‘How Far Will You Go’
‘Coming Back To Me Good ‘
‘G.O.A.T.’
‘Passengers’
‘The Hell Of It’
‘Italian Horror’
‘Bird In A Cage’
‘Algorithms’
The band will then play Summer Solstice II at Leicester’s Victoria Park on July 6, before headlining Latitude Festival in Suffolk on July 26. Visit here for tickets and more information.