Album Review: Kasabian – 'The Alchemist’s Euphoria'
This album welcomes a new era for space-rockers Kasabian.
The question on everyone’s mind is, “will Kasabian still sound like Kasabian?”. Well, yes and no. Serge Pizzorno embraced the leading role in this psychedelic adventure Kasabian has been taking us on, preparing for fronting by ‘studying videos of Iggy Pop whipping up a crowd’, as NME reports. He spends much of “The Alchemist’s Euphoria” splashing about an electric pool and genre-hopping in the same way many of Kasabian’s albums have done in the past, but this time it’s in a distinctively Pizzorno manner. Wilefully working in rap fundamentals, pillars of pop principles and electronic essentials, this album takes on a titanic task. But in the same way Genesis replaced Peter Gabriel with Phil Collins, the Kasabian train will not, nay, cannot be stopped. Pizzorno takes a moment for every idea to swill around the glass before taking a long sip of artistic embellishment only to swallow it up with profound rhythmic mastery.
The album, bound not by the perimeters of genre, hovers somewhere between sorrowful synth-led ballads and incisive almost-rap-but-not-quite hard hitters - you can imagine that when such numbers are performed live, the crowd might not need much convincing before brazenly headbanging as you watch the floor open up to form a mosh-pit. Does the fluctuation of energy throughout this album hold together like glue? I don’t know, perhaps Pritt-stick, but it isn’t as though it doesn’t work. Each song leads neatly into the next, and moody vocals - with what sounds to me like light distortion - make it hold very nicely together, but I think it’s fair to say some of the edges are holding on for dear life. But, really you can truly feel that this is still Kasabian – all bands experiment and the new front man is exactly what they needed to keep their music relevant – and the old fans will not be left feeling this is an entirely new band. The opener on the album is “ALCHEMIST”, which begins with crashing waves more at home on the ‘Calm’ app than a Kasabian album. Lyrically, it demands that we ‘shut the door on your way if you’re leaving’, which could be Serge’s way of imploring us to close off the pre-conceived notion of what Kasabian was, and open our minds to what it is … what it will be.
This futuristic, artistic and experimental vibe helps make this album fresh. Yet to think this is completely un-Kasabian-esque is completely wrong and unfair. “SCRIPTVRE” ‘kick[s] it to the grave’ and, in an almost proverbial fashion, Serge Pizzorno has ‘gotta reach for the mic as [he] walk[s] from the shadows’. What might this mean? An acknowledgement of the role Serge has had foisted upon him? I would say so. Following this dark, dynamic track, going from strength to stronger, “ROCKET FUEL” comes tumbling in as a cheeky, aptly-named, psychonautic beat-breaker. It keeps us on our toes and in space – a familiar feeling when listening to Kasabian – getting 808s and triplet hi-hats so characteristic of hip-hop, and, party anthem as it is - Serge ‘is just looking to get high’, whilst promising ‘to teach you how to fly’. Nodding to the great changes these few years have brought Kasabian in a not-so-subtly named “STRICTLY OLD SKOOL”, the lyrics again bring us to the idea of the past and the future entangled as one. Pizzorno sweetly acknowledges the prior artistic direction in the title and follows it up with ‘freshly out the gate’.
The first single of this new era “ALYGATYR”, continuing Pizzorno’s penchant for modified spellings, does not in fact ‘back down’ from the sound we love and expect from this power-quartet and thematically stays ‘out in space’ with hard hitting choruses accented by vocals that sound like they’ve been sent through a pipe lined with sandpaper. Relentlessly driving home ‘Space’ as a concept, the following 48 second mid-point to “The Alchemist’s Euphoria” comes “Space”. A synth pad follows a harmonically pleasing four-chord sequence, repeated to bring a moment of peace and clarity to this otherwise gritty rock-feature. The songs then take a little while to build back up, taking a moment to languish in the feeling of a tragic love-lost protagonist in “THE WALL SPIKE”. You know, rain rolling down the window, staring miserably into the abyss? All of that stuff. Picking his heart up off the floor, emotive prog-inspired “TUVE SPIKE” takes its own pace to build into a song which seems to have three songs mashed into its 5:45 run time. Serge naturally adorns the whole tune with both harmonic and dissonant vocal layers finishing with a rather lovely guitar moment which embraces the ballad-y, Pink Floyd-y, kind of creepy energy that’s captured in the eighth track off this new-era album.
Then we’re back, futuristic rhythm-led, modulator-heavy “STARGAZR” takes us right off Earth into the dark recesses of the universe where vowels don’t matter and consonants rule supreme. Trippy, alien-like keyboards take us spinning into a slow descent of minimalistic madness, before shaking us awake with second half that is described by NME as a ‘90s hip-hop-style instrumental’, as though perhaps metaphorically stating through the music this ‘past and present’ notion that seems to have followed through the album as a theme. Another single, “CHEMICALS”, has a nice little build up and floats around into anti-gravitational euphonic harmonies which leap in to hold the hand of the despairing but also hopeful lyrics, ‘hold on, chemicals ain’t got you baby’. The new frontman said of this song that ‘it was me seeing myself in those few weeks when everything kicked off [with Meighan]. It’s the future me saying to that person: ‘This is shit, but don’t worry, it will get better’. This lovely sentiment brings us back round to Serge’s ability to look to both the past and the present, here with an eye on the future, something he seems to have an almost soothsayer-level ability to do. I say this because his solo project “S.L.P.” (Sergio Lorenzo Pizzorno), released in 2019, had the opening lyric ‘I’ve been in lockdown, doing what I’m told’. Tell us your secrets Serge!
Closing off this wonderfully eclectic album “Æ SEA” brings back the sample which opens the album of crashing waves in a second interlude of 33 seconds, and repeats a twangy riff with a gloomy feel about it leading into passionate guitar-led “Letting Go”. This is another message of hope infused with acoustic guitar so clean it’s gleaming and lyrics telling us ‘you got time to work it out’, and ‘even if your head’s not right, it’ll be alright if you just start letting go’, sweetly this song leans into a capturing a moment with Serge’s endless foresight ‘better days are yet to go’, ‘tomorrow is another day’, ‘let your mind just drift away’, and bringing the concept into the final chapter of the album, ‘are you floating out in space?’. This song shares Sharman-Serge’s softer side with the world, and the irresistible back-beat rhythm in the second half of this track gives us an exciting build, the music matching the words in its hopefulness, encapsulated when Pizzorno sings ‘it just got better now’. It did get better, Kasabian got better, they healed from their loss and “The Alchemist’s Euphoria” proves it.
Words by Mary Cooke
