Kaiser Chiefs on their ‘Employment’ 20th anniversary show: “The beard is coming off and the eyeliner is going on”

nme.com:

Kaiser Chiefs have spoken to NME about their huge homecoming show in Leeds to mark the 20th anniversary of their 2005 debut album ‘Employment’.The band will play the seven-times Platinum, UK Number Two record in full at their biggest headline show to date when they hit Temple Newsam Park on May 31, 2025.They’re set to be joined by some massive names from the ’00s indie era such as Razorlight, The Cribs and We Are Scientists – all of whom will be showcasing fan-favourite classic albums in their entirety to mark their own 20th anniversaries.Speaking to NME, frontman Ricky Wilson and bassist Simon Rix explained that they wanted the event to be a “time capsule” from those heady days, and told us how they’ll be “doing nostalgia properly”.“Over the last 20 years, people kept telling us, ‘Oh, it’s the first album I bought’ or ‘I bought it when I was this age’, ‘My mum and dad used to listen to it’,” said Rix. “It’s not only the songs, it’s what it means to people and what people were doing at the time.

It’s all that stuff that we’re celebrating.”The pair also looked back on first starting out and being catapulted to fame after being “cool for about 15 minutes”.Check out our fill interview below, where the Kaisers recalled winning an NME Award for Best Album, the “mad” yet “tense” experience of attending the raucous ceremony, and discussed having a fan in Slipknot‘s Corey Taylor.NME: Hello Kaiser Chiefs.

When you spoke to NME in 2019, you asked if ‘Employment’ was even “that good” and said it was “lucky it was of a time”. How do you feel today?Ricky Wilson: “I think with any first record there’s an element of lots of things you probably want to change.