Live at the 9:30 Club, Washington DC. If you have swept all memories of the Kaiser Chiefs and their plethora of earworm songs into some forgotten corner of your brain, it’s time to do some serious memory digging. If you still need to be convinced that their catchy-as-hell tunes are worth revisiting, this video of their gig at 9:30 Club in Washington in 2012 should do the trick. If the crowd had any fears about whether the Kaisers could pull off a show with the same relentless energy as they did circa 2007, they were soon quashed when the band burst into an explosive rendition of opener ‘Every Day I Love You Less’. But by the time you realised you shouldn’t have doubted them in the first place they were already bombarding your eardrums with glorious noughties sing-a-long gems like ‘Never Miss A Beat’ - and the shimmering indie-pop sound and infectious beats that we grew to love in songs like ‘Ruby’ are there to drive you into a frenzy of arm-waving, and when they broke into the brooding, synth-funk laden ‘Little Shocks’ a couple of songs into the set, it was met with a very positive response from the crowd. Then again, when a frontman is as engaging and spontaneous as Ricky Wilson, it’s hard not to get into the groove of things whether the song is familiar or not. If the Kaiser Chiefs set out to prove on that night that they still have “it” in bucket loads, there are two words that were probably on the lips of everyone at the show by the end of the night: mission accomplished.  

 

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