Jurassik Lark
Lairy lad rockers turned musical sophisticates Kasabian discuss their dinosaur-inspired new album and their burgeoning career as Sky Sports pundits.
Roisin Dwyer, 16 Sep 2011
There’s a part in Tom And Jerry where Jerry pulls Tom’s whiskers and it makes a plucking sound, now that’s called pizzicato. I didn’t know that though! I can’t read music so I’d have to go round the houses explaining what sound I wanted in these crazy ways and they would have to interpret it. It was a really interesting way of working! I’m really proud of the arrangements though,” says Serge Pizzorno.
The Kasabian guitarist and songwriter is explaining the unusual working relationship he developed with the 20-piece orchestra that feature on the outfit’s latest album Velociraptor!.
Pizzorno has been the main songwriter since the departure of keyboardist Christopher Karloff in 2006. The two albums he has helmed since, West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum and the current opus, have made the lad-rock title with which they were initially tarnished redundant.
His more complex, experimental approach to the craft stands in stark contrast to the songs on 2004’s self-titled debut and 2006’s Empire.
The first two records spawned a slew of hits such as ‘LSF’, ‘Empire’, ‘Shoot The Runner’ and ‘Club Foot’ (which Sky Sports used on its soccer advertisements). Support slots to the Gallagher Brothers, a similarly voracious appetite for partying and frontman Tom Meighan’s general gobbiness also bolstered the LR label.
But now, it seems the troupe have come of age. Pizzorno has become a father and claims to have given up drugs to write the current album. The fervent partying has quietened and Meighan’s outbursts have tapered off.
Result? Perhaps their most accomplished work yet.
When Hot Press catches up with Pizzorno, the band are en route to Transylvania to play the Peninsula Festival in Targu Mures, a prospect about which Serge is “really excited”.
The softly-spoken guitarist thanks me profusely for my praise of the album and throughout the exchange is faultlessly pleasant, polite and unwaveringly enthusiastic about the band’s current trajectory.
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