SINGLE: Kaiser Chiefs - Ruby

Warning: strong opinions lie ahead.
Along with the music scene becoming apparently more indie-based than ever before in 2005, the year spawned some terrifically awful bands. Amongst the same lines being sung in the exactly same way albeit on different songs being its main focus of artistic integrity, 'new wave' indie-'rock' showed us all the worst elements of british popular music - jerky bleating favoured over any decent melody, a mad-fer-it-manchester approach to vocals all the time, plus the bad fashion sense. The concept of laddism was revisited - people claiming to be 'the next Oasis', but these claims were cop-outs because the only thing alike Oasis these groups had was a poor imitation of the swagger.
Remember the 'oohs' and 'whoaaas' britpoppers like Pulp used to use to great effect and humour in their songs? Well, one particular group in the 2005 indie-rock scene by the name of Kaiser Chiefs (no idea what the name is about, and can't be bothered to research it to be perfectly honest) must have decided to themselves during song-writing, 'hey, that "whoooooooaaaaahhh!" we used in that song sounds so good, I think we should use it in every song of ours!'. Debut album from the Kaisers produced singles which worked well in the form of tunes, but simply floated amongst the turdy waters of new wave and thus made it somehow, piss-annoying. This, along with the 'whoaaas': there is one in Oh My God (first single), and roughly 8 million in I Predict a Riot. The latter track was played so many times on every single radio station, it was like chinese water torture - but without either the chinese aspect or the water. So it was purely torture, which is even worse.

Now, let's play a game called 'Spot The Bias'. The return of the Kaiser Chiefs to the radio is not a welcome one. But Ruby sounds like an exception the Chiefs rule: there are no 'whoaaassss' or similar build-ups of that fashion present. A relief to the ears - the song-writing is not actually bad either. A classic-rock riff introduces Ruby, and plunges into a quite dirty line, balanced cleverly with brief major chord flourishes. The verse sounds like typical Kaisers sung in a typical, downy Kaiser way. And the chorus, while absolutely fine and dare I say it - good - in a musical sense, it is hard to hear beyond it sounding like it was constructed for radio. 'Ruby, Ruby, Ruby, Ruby ... Do ya, do ya, do ya, do ya' is a refrain likely to be found on any mediocre pop song of the 60s, 70s, 80s or 90s. The decent writing of the song falters with the bridge, which is a remarkably unimaginative lump of quintissentially boring listening. Whereas most guitarists constructing a solo add at least a flavour of vibrato, or write a counter-melody to the underlying chords - it is instead simply dual guitars, set in 1-octave registers, doing exactly the same melody as in the rest of the song. Avoiding melodic expectation is a good thing, but not in such a placid manner.

Ruby has already performed triumphantly - at time of writing it's the UK no.1 single. While the buying public will find nothing challenging and everything inviting about this particular tune, there is no convincing it is a great song. Time and then new album will show what else the Kaiser Chiefs have been working hard on in the studio.
Overall - 5.5
Get it? - it's catchy...