“No one's got more than three good songs”: Kasabian’s Serge Pizzorno talks online grifters, AI emptiness and new genre-hopping album Act III
With their new ninth album, Kasabian throw off the ‘lad rock’ shackles, as Pizzorno embraces his position as one of live music’s great frontmen.
Serge Pizzorno, Kasabian frontman, chose (wisely) not to watch the World Cup final half-time show.
I’m catching up with the singer/songwriter/festival-anthem-conductor the morning after the big game and its midway/mid-tier entertainment — a rather underwhelming schmaltzfest featuring Shakira, Madonna, Justin Bieber and Coldplay, among overpaid others.
“Football won in the end,” jokes Pizzorno, who is at his home in Leicester, working out how tracks from the band’s new, ninth, album, Act III, are going to work into Kasabian’s upcoming live shows.
“I almost approach it like a soundscape, like a soundtrack,” he tells Shortlist over a Zoom call in his home studio.
“In my mind, it runs as a score, basically. It's almost like a way of templating, how songs go in and out of each other. I really, really want this to feel like a real journey through the eras of Kasabian.”
Would Kasabian have done a better job at the half time show? Pizzorno is, afterall, renowned for his own not-too-shabby skills on the pitch.
“I think absolutely yes,” he laughs.
“I mean, honestly, we're made for it. We've got the tunes and the energy. But do you know what I did at half time? Because it's half an hour, I had a few pals over, so we did a 'Dad's v Lads' football game. It's a good time to get a decent game in. So I didn't watch it... but we'd play that for sure.
“But I'd say we only want 15 minutes. Get the lads back on the pitch! 30 minutes is a joke. 15 is enough — no one's got more than three good songs anyway.”
‘Three good songs’ does the Kasabian back-catalogue a major disservice though, and Pizzorno has become the perfect frontman to channel them through. Following the dismissal of former frontman Tom Meighan in 2020 (Meighan was convicted of domestic assault the same year), Pizzorno has taken on the talismanic mantle at the front of stage for Kasabian, steering the band for the last half decade through more than 150 shows.
Swapping the guitar for the mic has led to some of the most memorable gigs in the band’s history – and London has played host to some of the best, from a barn-storming outdoor show at Finsbury Park to an arena-shaking masterclass at the O2 in Greenwich.
“The Finsbury Park show was, I say this in all honesty, and not to take it too lightly, but it was probably one of the greatest shows we've ever played,” Serge beams.
“The atmosphere was just really truly special, and I've seen some of the footage back. I'm still on a massive high honestly — I can still go back to the stage and every now and again sort of get flashbacks of it. I've still not really come down from it. To see the next generation of Kasabian fans, and then the people that have been there since day one together, just vibing together. It was honestly absolutely amazing, it was an absolute pleasure.”
London crowds (unfairly) have a reputation for being standoffish and chin-scratchy, but that’s never been the case for Kasabian, who see the capital’s fans as among the most up-for-it in the world.
“Everyone’s always ‘Oh, you know, it's a London crowd, so expect it not to go off as much as it does anywhere else'. But we've never felt that — especially like when we played the O2. It was like a full on '90s rave. It was mental — the O2 does not go off like that, that gig was crazy, it was big,” says Serge.
“Our experience of London shows has always been just chaos, even from playing the Camden Monarch back in the day. There's a sort of dancier vibe, I would say. People have just got that little shoulder turning.”
SERGE ON GETTING LOST IN LONDON
“I love walking around London. When I realised how close everything was — before that I'd just go on the tube everywhere. The one day we went, 'Let's just walk to Soho', and you go, 'Fuck!' Everything's pretty close. Get some good music on, and literally just walk, and then you find mad little pockets, crazy little pubs, little clothes shops that you just would never expect, that you had no idea were there. I think that's the beauty of the place for me.
“I always end up walking places and never really knowing where I am! 'That pub looks like it's from the 14th century!' I also love the Tate Modern, I always have, and I love it around the South Bank. I love the architecture around there. Greenwich too — I've just started to go out there because that's always seemed so far away, but it's great round there as well, a whole other world.”
That’s in no small part thanks to Pizzorno’s ever-growing stage presence. The band (completed by Tim Carter on guitars, Ian Matthews on drums, and Chris Edwards on bass) have become a formidable unit, despite the trials the last decade has thrown at them. Serge likens his performance to “a martial art.”
“I just gave my heart to it,” he says of having to step up to the mic.
“I had no real idea on how or why. Great rock and roll is just from the heart. So if you go on stage and you just go, 'I'm gonna give you everything I've got, every single part of me you're gonna have every night'. That's kind of where you start because that's all you've got, right? And then over time, like anything, you start to learn the craft. And then you learn how to stand in front of 50, 60,000 people and entertain.
“Now I feel like I legitimately kind of have a little bit of a clue what's going on!”
“I do genuinely see myself as just someone in the crowd listening,” he explains.
“Like, if I was in the crowd now, this is what I want to happen. And the crowd probably sees themselves in me on stage. Because that's the way I'm trying to harness them — that kind of takes it to a really big level.”
“A little bit of every Kasabian era”
Act III then represents a culmination of the graft as much as the craft. The past decade has been a proving ground for the band, and Pizzorno on more than one occasion has said the album is a “clean slate” for the band.
It leaves next to nothing on the table. Act III takes a pick-n-mix approach to sound and genre — there’s the rock and the riffs, obviously, but also hip-hop, soul, psychedelia and rave weaved across its tracks. A musical magpie, is there anything Serge doesn’t like to listen to?
“I have a sort of physical reaction to things that I really like,” he explains.
“If something touches me emotionally, there's goosebumps, I can feel overwhelmed, joy. Music can really move me. It could be a weird old folk song, and I'd be sitting there going, 'Whatever this is, I am just in'. It could be a classical piece, or it could be drum and bass. I think why I've always made music the way I've made it is that I've just instinctively followed what I like.
“There are times where a lot of Kasabian records, they can jump, they jump! Sometimes it can be a bit jarring — some industrial techno followed by a really sweet acoustic ballad. But it's just the way in which I react to music.”
The record “feels like a little bit of every Kasabian era” says Serge. “There's a little nod to all the little places that we visited in the past.” But it also dips its toes into social commentary more explicitly than in previous work.
‘One nation under one retail park / There’s nothing here for you’ Serge sings on Soulmate. “The line… I just thought it would look great on a t-shirt!” he jokes — but there’s a deeper longing for a lost sense of community he sees across the UK today, dominated by mega-corp brands and uncaring local governance.
SERGE ON LONDON’S BEST PUBS
"I love the East End, my pals live that way. There's some amazing history around there, especially around places like Wapping. There's a pub around there [The Prospect of Whitby, next to what was once known as 'Execution Dock', .ed] where they used to hang pirates.
"There they have 'one for the road' where you're allowed a drink with your family before they hang you! It's all that amazing history I absolutely love."
“I live in Leicester, and the centre was just such a vibrant, beautiful, interesting place to be 20 years ago, because there were independent stores. I do wish that landlords and councils would make rent for premises doable, so we can have places to go and interesting stores.”
“Maybe this just sounds like such an old fashioned idea,” he muses. “But I do think community is based around people just hanging out and sharing ideas. In Leicester now, we've kind of lost the city centre, and I wish we hadn't. It's not gone forever — if there were art centres and places for people to show work, music venues for people to just go and play… I just feel like that's the start of something in your own community that you could start.”
The album also takes a shot at online bad actors and ill-intentioned influencers on the track The Guru and the Crypto Time Machine, a wave of characters Serge likens to 60s cult leaders and snake-oil salesmen.
“I was just noticing a sort of new wave guru — masked behind trying to help you out, getting you fit, improving your wellness and mindfulness and... then charging £10 a month at the end of it,” he says.
“In terms of social media, I just fight against the attention that it dominates, and I just worry about the creativity that's lost on time spent scrolling. You look at your own screen time and it's ridiculous. I could have learnt five languages! I could have made eight more albums! I'm not saying everyone should switch off their phones, it's just all that energy being lost into essentially stuff that's just trying to sell you something.
“I've got kids, and without sounding like a fucking nagging old twat, I want them to know your attention is yours.”
And AI? If the entirety of the Australian music-loving public can be taken with an algorithmically generated cover of Madonna’s Like A Prayer, we’re all doomed, right? Serge remains pragmatic.
“If you're interested in the commerce, if you're an artist that thinks about units and algorithms and shifting money around, then something like AI is brilliant for you because you can have it do a million things, you can have it copy whatever you want, and you can just keep pumping the system with more and more music. Same in fashion, film, everywhere,” he argues.
“But I'm not a songwriter because of that, you have no control over any of that. I write music because I fucking have to, and it makes me feel incredible, and it makes me feel excited every morning I wake up. I think, 'Today's the day I might fucking write that song that changes the world,' or 'I might write that melody that that is as good as Strawberry Fields'. I don't want that taken away from me because I could just go online and say 'Write me a melody like X, Y, Z'. Then I've done nothing. I make music because I love making music.”
Shaking off the shackles
Act III is eclectic and thoughtful then — and a million miles from the ‘lad rock’ labelling that has unfairly hung around Kasabian’s neck for much of the later part of the band's existence. For Serge, that label has been both frustrating and a tool with which to defy expectations.
“I do find it hilarious,” he laughs. “But I also think it instantly reveals the listener that hasn't even listened to it. After all these years, they kind of sound like they don't really know what they’re talking about if they say that.
“So I was patient and I just bided my time, I just kept my mouth shut and watched it play out. I knew where I was going, I knew what I wanted to make. We were taking things from Kraftwerk, the Silver Apples, David Lynch, Jodorowsky.
“Sometimes it's nice to play with it. We could use it — certainly when you first start out. It's a fight to get out of Leicester. It's a fight to be noticed — to be in a band, you know, wasn't a cool thing.
“When you first do your interviews, you're still in that mode — you don't really know how to communicate with journalists, you feel like they're from another world, and then you retreat back into your fighting mode. So I can understand the miscommunication at the beginning. We sat with journalists and they'd try and catch you out, you'd feel it coming, but then rather than sort of try and talk your way out of it you'd just double down on being a bit of a shitbag! Which is kind of punk, like, 'You know what? Yeah, we are fucking lads. Fuck you.' You retreat into that mentality.”
With ACT III in the bag, “all bets are off” for Kasabian’s next move, says Serge. But there’s a couple of things on the frontman’s to-do list that hint as to where his creative energies are pointing.
“I would love to make a pure orchestral record,” he reveals. “I don't know whether that would be a Kasabian thing, but I would love to follow that side of what I like to listen to and make something heartbreaking. Something that would fill the Verona amphitheatre — candles, just pure emotional music. I would love to do that. Writing the third record, I listened to [Love's] Forever Changes a lot. I really enjoyed that album.”
And the silver screen calls, too — but in front of the orchestra, rather than the camera.
“I scored a film over 10 years ago now. So I'd really like to do that again. I would really love to do a score for a Shane Meadows, that would be the dream, or a Steve McQueen film.
“But in terms of Kasabian, all bets are off. It's good times, man. Good times.”
Kasabian headline Leeds Festival on August 27th, and London’s O2 Arena on December 18th as part of a nationwide UK tour. New album ‘Act III’ is out on September 4th, and new single ‘SUPERPOWERS’ is out now.
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