Gig review: Kasabian - SSE Hydro, Glasgow

“OK you Jocks, let’s see you,” snarled singer Tom Meighan during Club Foot, a swaggering golf punk in a tweed jacket, his dapper sartorial choices and confrontational attitude cribbed straight from the Liam Gallagher playbook.

Kasabian front man Tom Meighan. Picture: Lisa Ferguson

Kasabian

Hydro, Glasgow

***

Alongside him stalked guitarist Serge Pizzorno, stick-thin in skinny leather jeans and a T-shirt, scraggy beard and flowing locks reminiscent of mid-revolution Russell Brand.

To complete this tableau of 2014-vintage rock ‘n’ roll excess, four female string players dressed as skeletons flanked the band, all dwarfed by a giant screen which flashed up oblique slogans in pink and black text: “buckie,” it strobed in artful lower case during Empire, to big cheers from a lively crowd who got the reference to Buckfast, a refreshment many of them might have enjoyed before they arrived.

It’s true that this combination of lairy, absorb-everything rock and cod-meaningful visual excess has been a staple since Britpop, but there’s something about the hard-partying, nothing-left-to-lose desperation of Kasabian’s music that speaks of their times more and more.

The most propulsive of the Leicester group’s hits (although in truth, none of them slow below racing speed) were the firmest fan favourites, with Shoot the Runner, Cutt Off, Fire and Vlad the Impaler all played so loud it felt like being in a fist fight.

Yet for a group with such a track record, the material from their game-changing newest album 48:13 was the most interesting here, including the loose electro-funk of eez-eh, treat’s cocky rap and stevie’s swooping, string-abetted assertion that “we’ll live to fight another day”. There’s no doubt they will.

Seen on 19.11.14