Album review: Kasabian’s For Crying Out Loud is typically brash and macho

Kasabian are often hailed as the heirs to Oasis, and the Leicester quartet’s crown as Lords of the ­Laddishness remains in place with this sixth album.

Album cover image of For Crying Out Loud by Kasabian. Courtesy Columbia

For Crying Out Loud

Kasabian

Columbia/Sony

Three stars

Kasabian are often hailed as the heirs to Oasis, and the Leicester quartet’s crown as Lords of the ­Laddishness remains in place with this typically brash, macho sixth album.

III Ray (The King) is a braggadocio album opener that marries a sledgehammer riff with a clubby, remix-ready electro interlude. But it's the fumes of the Gallagher brothers's indulgent epic Be Here Now – 20 years old in August – that guitarist/songwriter/producer Sergio Pizzorno seems to have been inhaling while crafting For Crying Out Loud, a more wantonly variable, hit-and-miss set than its pedestrian predecessor, 2014's 48:13. Are You Looking for Action? is a meandering eight minutes of white-boy psych-funk.

Like Oasis's endless All Around the World, closing lighter-waver Put Your Life on It pays homage to The Beatles' Hey Jude. Escapism is a recurring theme – in the lovelorn lost soul of Wasted, and the subdued The Party Never Ends – but overall this is an album of simple celebration, not mindful reflection.

The misleadingly named Bless This Acid House is the kind of witlessly blissful, fist-pumping arena rock that will keep Kasabian's gaudy crown in place for a few years yet.