West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum by Kasabian

West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum, Kasabian's third album, landed on 5 June 2009, the first they made without Christopher Karloff, the lead guitarist and songwriter who had walked out during the writing of Empire. Sergio Pizzorno stepped up as chief songwriter and co-producer alongside Dan the Automator, and Tim Carter chipped in guitar parts years before he joined the band full time.

With Pizzorno in charge, the Leicester band go wonderfully off the rails: psychedelic, theatrical and full of carnival-barker menace, Tom Meighan snarling over grooves that lurch from spaghetti-western twang to glam stomp, with Chris Edwards and Ian Matthews keeping it all swinging. "Fire" was the stadium-sized one, with "Where Did All the Love Go?", "Underdog" and "Vlad the Impaler" also sent out as singles. It debuted at number one in the UK, the band's second chart-topping album there, and was nominated for the 2009 Mercury Prize.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.