Can't wait for the arrival of the Oasis 'it's not a best-of, honest' Best Of in November? Satiate those lad-rock urges with the second album from Leicester's most unshaven. Empire is a massive record, as grandiloquent as Led Zep (check the rai strings on 'Me Plus One'), as ear-shreddingly disco-fried as vintage Chemical Brothers ('Apnoea'), and fizzing with lager-aloft epics like 'Shoot the Runner' and 'Sunrise/Light/Flies'. Unlike the calculated, humourless thump of Razorlight, this is stirring, ecstatic and - just sometimes - brilliantly OTT stuff.
Leicester's champions of lad-rock go over-the-top in style