Kasabian review, Happenings: A resurgence that few would have expected

Leaping about in a mad mop of denim tassels at Kasabian’s not-so-secret Glastonbury gig last weekend, Serge Pizzorno looked like a Hungarian sheepdog with a giddy case of the zoomies.

Splicing samples from The Prodigy and Fatboy Slim into their set, the man behind the Noughties band’s dance-rock songs got the overflowing Woodsies crowd bouncing around as madly as him, to both old hits (“Club Foot” and “Shoot the Runner”) and tracks from their zingy new album, Happenings.

It’s a resurgence that few would have expected. Kasabian’s beery-blokey vibe had long been falling from fashion when their lairy frontman, Tom Meighan, was fired after being convicted of assaulting his girlfriend in 2020.

But Pizzorno brings both a warmer energy and a proud ownership of his own material that has put fresh (rechargeable) batteries in Kasabian’s mood. That’s not to say they’ve started strumming acoustics and waving flowers. Happenings finds the Leicester band on synth-corroding, speaker-rattling form, with Pizzorno banging out big tunes and splashing out big, bell-bottomed chords.

It’s an album that opens like a spaceship landing in a sci-fi film: electronic notes beaming through a wind-blown effect. You’d be forgiven for thinking something rather proggy is about to slither down the metal gangplank.

Instead, there’s an abrupt jump cut to the disco-bass pulse of “Darkest Lullaby”, on which Pizzorno laments a lack of destination: “I don’t know where I’m going now/ Can we get back to the start?” Has he set his flying saucer down on the wrong planet? Who cares – the lights are still flickering in pretty little synth patterns, and the melody is designed to get people dancing through their disorientation.

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Things get grittier with “Call”, which owes a debt to the Nineties punk-rave scene. Kasabian rock out the distorted sirens, tribal drums, big choruses (“Ay-yay-yaya-yay!”) and swaggering chords. There’s rusty cowbell and bullhorn-accessorised anarchy on “How Far Will You Go”. Then the band drift into Balearic bliss with the sloshy-warm guitars and chant-along melody of “Coming Back to Me Good”. Pizzorno’s voice – previously lower in the mix – reaches out to make soothing human contact.

The slower songs still keep the tunes rolling. All slow-thudding drum-punch, gurning guitar solo and aspirational lyrics, “GOAT” is a sway-along motivational ballad – an “Eye of the Tiger” for fans more likely to be hitting the yoga mat than a punchbag. There’s an echo of early Radiohead in the yearning of “Passengers”, while the mid-tempo “Italian Horror” keeps its interlocking melodies neatly balanced – even if it’s not always easy to work out what each song is about.

Indeed, Pizzorno doesn’t tell stories so much as chuck out phrases for revellers to snag onto. So against the gnarly industrial grind of “Bird in a Cage” – with its nods to Gary Numan’s retro-synth semitones – you catch “don’t get me wrong” and wonder if you might be.

The track ends with the very Nineties indie refrain, “This one’s for the weirdos...” which takes us back to the days of Carter USM and Ned’s Atomic Dustbin. It comes with a football terrace chorus and wide-open arms. Nothing new, then, but full of waggy tailed exuberance and community spirit. As a Leicester-born girl myself, I’m glad to hear the boys’ best side is back in town.