Frontman Serge Pizzorno talks bad British weather, the decline in bands and world building within records
“Everyone seems so happy!” Serge Pizzorno chuckles, his voice bubbling with the kind of joy that catches you off guard. He says it like I should be amazed by the happiness. There possibly even a note of surprise in his voice. Like he’d forgotten what it’s like to be around people who aren’t endlessly shivering in the pouring rain.
It’s mid-afternoon in Melbourne. The sun’s low now, casting a warm glow across the streets. The streetlights have started flickering on, one by one, like they’ve been waiting for the cue. The air’s thick with that sweet, lazy afternoon energy—the kind that happens just before the city falls into that evening hum. Pizzorno is caught somewhere between jet lag and this strange sense of elation. You can tell that being here, in Australia, feels like the first real breath of freedom he’s had in a while.
“I’ve been walking around a lot,” he says, clearly soaked in the vibe of the city. “There’s a good vibe on the streets.” The contrast with London’s grim March weather is unmistakable. You can almost hear him exhaling the weight of it, the kind of fatigue that comes from being trapped in a cycle of bad weather and darker moods. Melbourne, on the other hand, seems to have swept that off him like it was nothing. He’s clearly in a good place.
“I bet the weather back home has something to do with it,” I venture, nodding toward his grin.
Pizzorno looks momentarily puzzled, then a knowing smile spreads across his face. “There might be something in that,” he says, warming to the thought. “The weather at home is fucking crazy! One minute it’s like a heatwave, and then in the afternoon, it’s snowing. I used to spend hours drawing, playing guitar, waiting for the rain to stop. It’s miserable, but I think we kind of fit that vibe. It’s weirdly part of the process.”
Pizzorno isn’t dissing Australia’s music industry either. In fact, he loves it. When I ask him about Aussie bands, and Pizzorno’s enthusiasm is immediate. “I love King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard,” he says, clearly a fan. “Pond. Lazy Eyes. Tame Impala. I feel a real kinship with those bands. They take it somewhere, and you can tell they’re having a laugh while they do it. It’s the good stuff.”
Currently, Kasabian are touring across Australia with Blossoms. It’s the band’s first trip back since 2017. It goes without saying that a lot has changed since then. Particularly for Pizzorno. In 2020, the band sacked their frontman, Tom Meighan. Pizzorno then stepped up to the plate.
They’ve also since released The Alchemist’s Euphoria (2022) and Happenings (2024), both showcasing a creative evolution for Pizzorno—one that’s less about following the rules and more about building entire worlds through sound.
Making a Kasabian album is like watching a Quentin Tarantino flick; within its songs, there’s a whole universe, a carefully constructed set of rules and emotions. And Pizzorno? He’s proud of that. After all, he’s the one who stepped into the frontman role after the band parted ways with their previous lead singer in 2020. “I build worlds when I make records,” Pizzorno explains, confident. “The artists who build worlds are the ones that stick around. It’s every detail—album covers, the fonts, the colour of the plectrums. Everything has to work with the story you’re telling. That’s what I believe. Great artists don’t just make records. They create worlds.”
For Happenings, Pizzorno wanted to lean into something that felt like ‘psycho pop.’ “I wanted it to be a modern pop record with a psychedelic edge,” he says. “Think of a Ramones record, but through the lens of today’s pop.” He tells me the album came together faster than anything he’s ever written. “It all came together in nine months,” he reveals. “After this huge tour, with all the big gigs, it just… flowed out.”
But for Pizzorno, the creative process goes beyond just making music. Each album is like a window into a different period of his life, a snapshot of the time and the person he was when making it. “I see them as windows into other times,” he says. “It’s like walking down a corridor, and you can see through each window what I was doing, where I was, and what life was like for me then.”
Now with two kids of his own, Pizzorno has gone back and listened to the records with them. “I tell them, ‘If you want to understand those parts of my life, just listen to the albums.’ It’s funny, you don’t realise it at the time, but those records become these milestones, these cornerstones of your life.”
And each tour feels different for him. “With every new record, we revisit the old songs,” he says. “Through the lens of Happenings, it’s a completely different experience.”
As we talk, I can’t help but notice how much he emphasises the word band. It feels deliberate. Like he meant for me to notice. So, I ask him about it.
“There’s just no bands anymore,” he says, his voice tinged with a blue frustration. “Sure, there are lots of bands out there, but real bands—the kind that reach the mainstream—those bands don’t seem to exist anymore. It’s a shame, because there’s some bloody good stuff out there.”
He points to Amyl and the Sniffers as an example. “They’re having a moment, but in my mind, they should be massive, and they’re not.”
When I ask why he thinks there’s been such a shift, he thinks for a moment before offering his answer. “Maybe people just don’t want to be in a band anymore. Maybe they want to do it on their own.” He shrugs. “I don’t know.”
As the conversation winds down, Pizzorno’s thoughts on the current state of music linger. Kasabian, a band that’s weathered the storm of changing times and internal upheaval, stands as one of the last of a dying breed.
In an age where bands are rarer than ever, Pizzorno’s commitment to building worlds, to telling stories with every note, feels like a stubborn refusal to let that tradition slip away quietly. The future of music may be uncertain, but for now, it’s clear: Kasabian is still here, still building, still creating—and for Pizzorno, that’s all that matters.
Kasabian are currently touring in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Tickets can be purchased here.
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