Kasabian, Webster Hall 9/20/06

Echo "Little Sister Kasabian" Hopkins and I went out to dinner with Jay, who plays guitar for the mostly-British rock band Kasabian. He's great, that's great, but as we walked to Webster Hall, I wasn't so sure about things. Seeing as the whole band is a bit of a family friend of hers, I didn't want to bring up what I knew of lead singer Tom Meighan's reputation.

via Stereogum:

KASABIAN VS. ROLLING STONES
"All I remember is Mick coming up and saying, 'I heard you had a storm, you %$#@er.' And Keith said hello. But it was weird because they are granddads. They should be drinking cups of tea in their armchairs."

KASABIAN VS. JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE
"[Justin is] a midget with whiskers who is just trying to be black. He's a puppet in a million-dollar suit who's had his strings cut off. It's just money music. Absolute rubbish. You can smell the money coming off it. He's a knobhead." Anything to add bassist Chris Edwards? "Sexyback? More like hairy back. It's the worst title of any record I've ever heard!"

KASABIAN VS. KEANE
"Tom [Chaplin, Kean's singer currently in rehab] has got no backbone. The Priory is for wimps. Some people like talking about themselves too much. It's sad that Keane felt they had to shout from the rooftops that he's gone in there."

KASABIAN VS. RADIOHEAD
“Look at our single ‘Empire’. We’re possibly the only band apart from Radiohead that changes tempo with a new single we’ve put out and no band dares do it, you know. We’re like a futuristic Led Zeppelin man with strings on, and electronic on it. ... We gave Radiohead a good run [at the V Festival]. I mean, you’re talking about a band that’s been around for about ten or twelve years, they’re massive and we just put our next single out. That’s all we’ve done and it was incredible. The response was wonderful. It was almost as if we were headlining the whole festival."

Either way, the concert was fantastic. Yesterday, the band's sophomore album, Empire was released, so they were pretty psyched, despite the fact that they kept yelling 'UK!' into the microphones. All of the songs were tight, enjoyable, dancable, and that was that.

Kasabian - Empire (mp3)

There's more, though.

As we walked upstairs to the main hall during one of Kasabian's opener's sets, we stepped into a dark, silent room. The only light came from a gigantic screen behind the band that was playing some sort of strange animated film. And this song was playing, and it blew me away.

Mew - The Zookeeper's Boy (mp3)

I hadn't heard much of Mew before now, but their debut album, And The Glass Handed Kites, is a fantastically strange Smashing Pumpkins meets Enya sort of thing. Highly recommended.