Kaiser Chiefs on their ‘Employment’ 20th anniversary show: “The beard is coming off and the eyeliner is going on”
Kaiser Chiefs have spoken to NME about their huge homecoming show in Leeds to mark the 20th anniversary of their 2005 debut album ‘Employment’.
The band will play the seven-times Platinum, UK Number Two record in full at their biggest headline show to date when they hit Temple Newsam Park on May 31, 2025.
They’re set to be joined by some massive names from the ’00s indie era such as Razorlight, The Cribs and We Are Scientists – all of whom will be showcasing fan-favourite classic albums in their entirety to mark their own 20th anniversaries.
Speaking to NME, frontman Ricky Wilson and bassist Simon Rix explained that they wanted the event to be a “time capsule” from those heady days, and told us how they’ll be “doing nostalgia properly”.
“Over the last 20 years, people kept telling us, ‘Oh, it’s the first album I bought’ or ‘I bought it when I was this age’, ‘My mum and dad used to listen to it’,” said Rix. “It’s not only the songs, it’s what it means to people and what people were doing at the time. It’s all that stuff that we’re celebrating.”
The pair also looked back on first starting out and being catapulted to fame after being “cool for about 15 minutes”.
Check out our fill interview below, where the Kaisers recalled winning an NME Award for Best Album, the “mad” yet “tense” experience of attending the raucous ceremony, and discussed having a fan in Slipknot‘s Corey Taylor.
NME: Hello Kaiser Chiefs. When you spoke to NME in 2019, you asked if ‘Employment’ was even “that good” and said it was “lucky it was of a time”. How do you feel today?
Ricky Wilson: “I think with any first record there’s an element of lots of things you probably want to change. But you shouldn’t change anything because it was perfect of the time. There’s a lot of luck involved, and a lot of ‘right place at the right time’. Luckily, we’d also been in every place, every time for the previous 10 years.
“So when ‘Employment’ happened, it was exactly what it said on the cover. It was our employment, and I think it’s perfect but it is also very imperfect. I like that we didn’t have many instruments, so the soundscape is quite limited.”
Simon Rix: “It’s [the sound] we had live. Especially something like ‘I Predict A Riot’, because that was recorded first. We had barely anything; we had broken guitars and pedals we were touring with.
“Even if it’s not perfect, it changed our lives. I think it changed all our lives – from working in bars in Leeds to actually being able to be musicians playing big venues. So it’s kind of saying thanks to the album for all the good stuff it’s done for us.”
Wilson: “You said we did ‘I Predict A Riot’ first… it reminds me that on the day we recorded it, I had to go and get an emergency filling, and then when I came back, my mouth was numb still. I sang it with a numb mouth, and I’ve had to replicate that voice ever since.”
‘Employment’ won Best Album at the NME Awards 2006 – beating Oasis, Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand and Babyshambles. Competition was high…
Wilson: “That does surprise me! I thought [Bloc Party’s] ‘Silent Alarm’ or something like that would have got that. Well, we were quite cool for about 15 minutes! Then we decided that the coolest thing we could possibly do is keep going. There have been a lot of bands that have not kept going for various reasons, and they fall out. Everyone falls out – it’s no reason to split a band up, because bands are important.”
What memories stick out from those early halcyon days of indie?
Rix: “I think one of the things for NME is how important the NME Tour was. The year before [2004] Franz had been first on, and then they got really massive – taking America by storm with ‘Take Me Out’.”
Wilson: “The NME Tour was amazing. The Killers, Bloc Party, Futureheads and us – what a line-up!”
Rix: “We should be very thankful for NME. Even though we were first on, it was one of the many things that catapulted us and got us in front of lots of people. The year after, I remember Arctics were on that bill, but everyone wanted to do the first-on slot because it became like a lucky slot. Everybody just wanted to be first on.”
Wilson: “I think Arctic Monkeys were on before Maxïmo Park! I like Maxïmo Park, but to see what Arctic Monkeys became… it’s incredible.”
The Cribs’ Ryan Jarman was on your table at the NME Awards 2006 and ended up hospitalised and needing stitches. How did you adapt to this new rock’n’roll lifestyle?
Wilson: “The NME Awards was always both a privilege and a tense moment. At first, it was great – I liked it a lot. I liked arriving there and thinking, ‘This is mad we’re here’, and looking at all the other bands pretending that they didn’t want to be there. But secretly, it’s the best night of their life.
“Then it became quite tense because we were going, ‘We’re getting getting quite big, and we’re on TV a lot’. And it’s like, ‘Should we still be here?’ I liked it, and I should have been a bit more proud of it, but I was a bit nervous.”
Do you have a relationship with the support bands on the Temple Newsam bill? It must feel special to share this celebration…
Wilson: “Definitely The Cribs – they sang on our last record [‘Kaiser Chiefs’ Easy Eighth Album’].”
Rix: “The Cribs are our pals – we’ve toured with them quite a bit. It’s really nice for those guys to be doing albums [in full] as well. It makes it sort of time capsule-y. We really wanted to make it so we’re doing nostalgia properly. We wanted to try and focus in and make it like a celebration of 2005 or 2006-ish.”
Some songs on ‘Employment’ – especially the first half – are still staples of your set. How is it revisiting those you haven’t played for many years?
Rix: “It’ll be good! It’s a challenge. I think a lot of those songs, when we look back at us in [previous incarnation] Parva, or an early B-side… they’re our favourite songs. Because they’re the ones that I know where there’s a lot more on the line. Just to be able to revisit that, it’s gonna be really good.”
Are there certain songs you’re apprehensive about dusting off?
Wilson: “I honestly think it’ll be loads of fun. We’ve never been a band that does a setlist and ignores our biggest hits. We’re not up ourselves, and just want to play for us – we’re not like that. We always make it the best set for the audience.
“This gives us an excuse to play songs that we wouldn’t usually play. We [sometimes] think, ‘Oh this might be one where people go to the bar’. But because it’s the album in full, and people have such a love for that record, I don’t think it’s gonna feel like that. I think it’s going to be for us and for the audience.”
Rix: “Ending on ‘Team Mate’ will be a bit of a sombre moment. We would rarely end with such a poignancy or a quiet moment; we’d never do that. So I think for us as well, I think it’ll be interesting and exciting to do something different. It’s quite nerve-wracking to do that in front of probably the biggest audience at a Kaiser Chiefs gig.”
‘Employment’ recently won the praise of Slipknot’s Corey Taylor who said he’d been “threatening to do a cover of ‘Modern Way'”. Can we expect a certain masked special guest in Leeds?
Wilson: “If he’s in town, definitely! I’ve got his number…”
Rix: “When he said in 2005 that he loved ‘Employment’, we were like, ‘OK, fine’. And then 20 years he’s like, if you could only take two albums on a desert island – one of which was written by him, and one written by someone else. The other one was ‘Employment’. I’m like, ‘Wow! There’s not another album of the last 19 years?!'”
Wilson: “We should send him a free ticket for the gig. It’s not what you would expect from him.”
Is the Kaisers’ metal era incoming?
Rix: “I think there is a connection between that community and what we do.”
Wilson: “I’ve no idea why, but I know what you mean.”
‘Oh My God’ was huge after being covered by Mark Ronson and Lily Allen. Did that open any doors? Mark went on to produce ‘Off With Their Heads’…
Rix: “It was a mad time in 2005 where we were playing ‘Oh My God’, Mark Ronson’s playing ‘Oh My God’, and Lily Allen’s playing ‘Oh My God’ – all of us quite big and quite successful. Every festival you went to, you’d definitely be hearing ‘Oh My God’. You think back and you’re like, ‘That’s really weird’. You wouldn’t get that now, I don’t think.”
Wilson: “I was watching TV one night and G4, the opera boyband, came on and sang ‘Modern Way’. I was livid! Girls Aloud were covering us.”
‘I Predict A Riot’ went viral last year when Leeds United beat Leicester in the Championship. Did this reaffirm your connection to the city?
Wilson: “It’s weird – it seems like a different world. Sometimes when you get a bit nostalgic, it’s almost like tasting what it was like back then. You get a wave across you of what it felt like to be in that position. It’s such an exciting, marvellous feeling but at the time, we were just knackered and we didn’t appreciate it.”
Now you’re taking stock?
Wilson: “Doing this 20 years later is like… we never stopped to go, ‘This is going better than anyone imagined in their wildest dreams’.”
Rix: “I remember we did Brixton Academy with Franz Ferdinand and we were like, ‘If we could headline here, that would be amazing’. And then we got to the point a couple of years later, like, ‘Can we play somewhere else?’.”
Wilson: “We weren’t ungrateful! I don’t think we ever got jaded or not excited by it, I just think you get used to it. And I think getting used to it is dangerous because it’s not something you should get used to, being a band. It’s something that changes every day, and it morphs and it evolves.”
What can fans expect from the show? Will there be nods to that era? The artwork, videos, outfits… or haircuts?
Wilson: “Well, yeah. The beard’s coming off and the eyeliner is going on!”
Rix: “We’ve been trying on the old blazers. Some of them don’t fit and some of them don’t exist anymore, so we need to work out exactly what we’re going to do. But yeah, we’ll definitely do some nods. We’re trying to make it nostalgic in a really good way.”
Wilson: “I used to wear boxing boots, didn’t I?! The moths have got them all – they’ve all disintegrated.”
The support bill is a who’s-who of ’00s indie, but can we expect any more new acts?
Rix: “There’s a couple of new artists already added, but they’re not on the poster [yet]. We want to try and have a couple of regional people, because good support West Yorkshire or Leeds or whatever.”
English Teacher recently became the first act outside of London to win the Mercury Prize in 10 years. What state do you think the Leeds scene is in now?
Rix: “I think it’s good, and there’s lots going on in Leeds. There can always be more investment and making sure the venues stay open. I think it’s more and more difficult to be a musician because it’s expensive and hard.
“But I think there’s lots of great little scenes in Leeds. Earlier on we were in a scene, but not all the bands sounded the same. I feel like there’s always been that thing of supporting each other, but not necessarily having to make the same sort of music.”
You were more in the quirky art-rock world initially, rather than the typical ‘laddy’ side of indie…
Wilson: “Leeds has always been interesting – ever since the ’70s and ’80s – because you didn’t have to fit into something. It’s not like the Mersey sound or even New York at the turn of the millennium when everything was quite Strokes-y.
“At the time, it felt like a negative that we were so far away from London. Getting people up from London to see you was hard work. But also it made it so that you could actually get good before you presented yourself to the world. And in Leeds, we all supported each other.”
Rix: “We’re always very grateful for the impact that Leeds had on our career.”
You’re quoted as saying you “historically always looked forwards”. Is album nine in the works?
Wilson: “I thought of a good title the other day, but that’s it. It always starts with the title.”
Rix: “The title ‘Employment’ was quite early. I think we’re getting an idea, but mostly at the moment we’re just concentrating on making sure these gigs next year are as good as they possibly can be.”
Kaiser Chiefs play Temple Newsam Park on May 31, 2025, with Razorlight (who will also celebrate 20 years of their own debut ‘Up All Night’), The Cribs, (performing a set to celebrate 20 years of their sophomore ‘The New Fellas’) The Coral and We Are Scientists (who will commemorate the 20th anniversary of major label debut ‘With Love And Squalor’ at the gig).
On top of that, former NME Cover stars HotWax will be joining the line-up to open alongside West Yorkshire up-and-comer Ellur.
Pre-sales are open now here, with tickets on general sale from 9am on October 11 and available here.
The post Kaiser Chiefs on their ‘Employment’ 20th anniversary show: “The beard is coming off and the eyeliner is going on” appeared first on NME.
Tom Skinner
NME
