stars out of 5 -- "[The album] marches through its baker's dozen of punk-tinged pop songs with a prickly sense of purpose. It was far from great album, but the simmering violence of "I Predict a Riot" and infectiousness of "Na Na Na Na Naa", "Everyday I Love You Less and Less", and "Oh My God" got the Chiefs bracketed with British ancestors such as Small Faces, Madness, and Blur. The rhythms were just as foregrounded, but drawn more from pub-rock and Britpop than Josef K and Joy Division, with banged-out piano runs and ramped-up choruses replacing chippy guitars and watertight drumming. Wilson attempts to force a barroom competitor into independent thought: "You're winding yourself up until you're turning blue, repeating everything that you've read," before giving up: "It's only 'cause you came here with your brothers, too; if you came here on your own you'd be dead.

Wilson's preoccupation with failed (and failing) romantic relationships continues with "Love Is Not a Competition (But I'm Winning)" as the logical followup to Employment's "Everyday I Love You Less and Less", the sentiment from which was properly identified on this Web site in Joe Tangari's Employment review as barely concealed pining. The copyright in this sound recording is owned by B-Unique Records and is exclusively licenced and marketed by Polydor Ltd. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has received an average score of 61, based on 29 reviews. But On Mob, he's clearly trying for something more, yet seemingly unaware that he's caught in a rut. Some user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.

The band consists of Ricky Wilson (vocals), Andrew "Whitey" White (guitar), Simon Rix (bass), Nick "Peanut" Baines (keyboards) and Vijay Mistry(drums). The central flaw of Mob-- and it's a profound one-- is that its attempt to refine Employment's boundless levels of boyish vigor with introspection and intellect comes across as tired and bored. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Condé Nast.

The band, in love as ever with the Britpop tradition that spawned them, offers another collection of swaggering uptempo guitar tracks that are full of big, singalong choruses.Of course, he doesn't, which was fine when the band was content to wallop the listener over the head. I Can Do Without You" is a half-hearted attempt at self-encouragement, and Wilson's not too sure he'll succeed, following the refrain with "but it won't be very good. The album topped the UK Albums Chart and the band released the singles "Everything Is Average Nowadays" on 21 May 2007 and "The Angry Mob" on 20 August 2007.

The band's debut album, Employment, and its proletarian bent sounded like a recipe for the broadest appeal possible: The Chiefs occasionally shared Jam-isms with the Futureheads, and could wank out a power ballad like Bloc Party, but their appeal was geared toward a larger audience than their art-school counterparts. If your previous album was a slow-burning success story, it can be hard to be expected to hit the ground running on the follow-up. In Europe, Asia and America, "Learnt My Lesson Well" and "Boxing Champ" were added together to make one track, at a running time of 5:25. He accidentally explains it best in "Thank You Very Much" (itself a pale retread of "I Predict a Riot"'s rhythm bed): "This should be a thrill, but it feels like a drill. The Buzzcocks-referencing "Everything Is Average Nowadays" mines similar territory ("everyone is sitting on the fence"), yet the band didn't get the message that they weren't supposed to prove their claim by illustrating how blandness sounds.In Japan, "Boxing Champ" and "Everything Is Average Nowadays" were added together to make one track, at a running time of 4:15. The band revealed to NME in October 2006 that they had recorded 22 songs and hoped to whittle that number down to 13 or 14 for the final album. They had the energy and enthusiasm of a group of soldiers on a weekend furlough, with Ricky Wilson leading a series of sing-alongs and sappy-but-heartfelt ballads.

The self-hatred is capped on "My Kind of Guy", where Wilson abandons the ladies and finds a partner in despair, one who "sounds as horrible" as he does.If "Mob" ended with that bit of resignation, it would be fine, but the coda brings the groans, explaining the titular mass not as rowdy bar patrons or concert attendees, but society itself: "We are the angry mob, we read the papers everyday/ We like who we like, we hate who we hate, but we're oh so easily swayed. Wilson was fine as a casual observer on Employment, and Mob's occasional, vague forays into social comment certainly illustrate that he'd do well to avoid too much editorializing. The Angry Mob" raises the stakes a bit, alternating clenched-teeth dares with limber capitulations, resulting in the album's most enjoyable song.