West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum is 5 today

It changed everything. It sounds like such an empty phrase but it's true. I love the first two albums with all my heart, but there was something magical about this one, it happened at the right time and it fixed a lot of things. I remember it leaked on May 23 and it was a total accident that I saw it right away, I wasn't checking every couple of seconds like I did the past few weeks. It was quite late so I put it on my iPod and took it to bed. I still remember how it felt and that I thought I've never heard anything like this before.

I think the fact that, in many ways, it was a brave thing to do is what makes the album so special- for a band who at that point had been branded by many as a 'lad band' to then come out with this album was incredible. Sort of a way of sticking two fingers up and shouting 'don't tell us what we can and cannot be'. That aside, everything about this album is beautiful, the songs, the art work and the tour design.

That album is also so special to me (well, my profile picture says it all). I remember have read the details on the french website and being very frustrated because Kasabian were so enthusiastic about the songs. I was so happy when it has leaked ! I was at home, doing nothing special, and I have listened it three times in a row, totally amazed. This album is perfect. So the leak is probably more important for me than the release date actually but I ran to the fnac (it's a shop in France where you can find books, discs etc) as early as I could only to buy the vinyls because that's better that way. And that was amazing because the whole concept is wonderful. The tour of course was also fantastic, I was there for the two gigs in Wembley and oh my god !!!

Loving this album more than ever. I keep switching between it and 48:13 on my way too and from work.
The only poor song is ladies and gentlemen imo, Tom's vocal style doesn't fit.

"I love Tom's vocals on this, he's really pushed himself for the sake of the song. You can hear all those experiences in his voice. I think the album needed a moment like this." - Serge, NME June 2009

In keeping with the theme of each song being representative of an inmate, Tom's embodying an older man, lamenting past glory and big scores on the gambling table, in the bar, past midnight (we've all met one of them at some point).

I think there's a hint of "I'm not like them, I shouldn't be here", if the subject is indeed an inmate. Maybe his gambling was the result of a compulsive or self-destructive behaviour that ruined him.

That's really what I love the most about the album. You can let your imagination run wild with it's theme and imagine up all sort of little scenarios about each song. If the lyrics are each inmate's testimony, you could have food for thought on trying to place each person in the Asylum's history. For example, I get a sense of Victorian London about Take Aim. The subject sounds like a particular abrasive person, with no respect for law and order or the way society treats the lower classes. Some of the later lyrics hint at capital punishment too.

Anyone else ever had similar thoughts regarding WRPLA?

WRPLA is probably the most played album in my collection.

It evokes so many memories and feelings. You know like smells or places can do. The opening chords of Underdog, Fire and Vlad. Certain lyrics from WDATLG, Thieves and Take Aim...

But its really the WRPLA gigs... Cardiff, supporting (outperforming) Oasis, the unforgetable couldron of the Sheffield O2 in June, Sheffield & Nottingham arenas with Dominico's speech and the drop dead JATM opening, and then, albeit a year on, Benicassim. Just a magical musical year that, at one point or another, assaulted and caressed every sense as if i was an actual resident at West Ryder.