Throughout history, we can probably all agree that the good has outweighed the bad, but hell if the bad hasn't been really, really fucking bad. Human beings don't do themselves any favors. We're arrogant and cocky. We're selfish and hard-headed. We are antagonistic and greedy. And still, we're able to harbor trace amounts of kindness and beauty that get blown way out of proportion. We are some tricky and awfully confounding creatures, but we do what we can with the ways that we're wired. The way that the Kaiser Chiefs rake all of this up into their art is to see the ugliness that surrounds us, knowing that it will recede into the background at very random moments and people will reveal themselves for what they're worth, for their true merits, and then everything will go back to the way it was before and a new wait will begin. There's a brisk business done of digesting all of the sludge and all of the sunshine and coming out with some kind of refurbished finish for it all. You get the sense that there's no stopping all of the whirlwinds and there's no softening the rocks that we're going to get bashed up against by the storms that enter our lives, but that we're defined by the longhand of our time spent, rather than the shorthand. Lead singer Ricky Wilson presents stories about impending turmoil, but he also cushions it all with looks toward saving graces. It's this crazy modern world that we're living in, wrenching many things, but we're kind of stuck with it so future grace is all we can hope for.