Frankly, I’m surprised that what the Kaiser Chiefs are doing with their new album The Future is Medieval isn’t getting more attention. Marketing wise, it’s more revolutionary than Radiohead’s In Rainbows, but maybe it’s because this is Kaiser Chiefs, a band who have been squandering away any goodwill their (admittedly, a guilty pleasure of mine) nu-BritPop 2005 debut Employment brought them, and not Radiohead. The band essentially lets you pay for ten songs out of a possible twenty available, allowing you to order them as you see fit (if you wanted to listen to all twenty you’d have to buy two “copies”) and select whichever artwork you want out of twenty possible choices. You can also sell back your own copy via social media for 1 pound/however many $ that comes out to. I’m not sure if this is a feasible idea in the long term, but it’s certainly interesting, although I wasn’t exactly desperately seeking twenty new Kaiser Chiefs tracks. It also makes The Future is Medieval extremely hard to review . . . very clever Chiefs, very clever.

Kaiser Chiefs – “Can’t Mind My Own Business”