Happenings

Six days before Kasabian released their eighth album, the Leicester band played a surprise gig on the Woodsies stage at Glastonbury 2024. A tent-wide mosh pit lit up by burning flares and equally luminous grins confirmed that Kasabian’s knack for bonding pop nous and everyman swagger to psychedelic adventure and club-ready grooves still commands the sort of devotion that helped earn them a headline slot at the festival 10 years earlier. On <i>Happenings</i>, their always restless lead singer/guitarist/creative engine Serge Pizzorno revitalises that mix by filtering out the flotsam with an every-note-counts approach. He indulges his musical curiosity but never lets it meander, restricting the 10-song album to a 28-minute running time. So “Hell of It” might draw on garage rock, hardcore rave and synth pop but it does so with satin-smooth gear changes and an urgency that sees the song done in three and a half minutes. In these surrounds, you’re rarely more than 60 seconds away from a stirring chorus, and the stickiest hooks—in disco-rock thumper “Coming Back to Me Good” and the crisp, unburdened pop of “Algorithms”—feel fit to be sung from shoulders in festival fields for a few years yet. <i>Happenings</i> may be short but it’s consistently sharp.