British rebuild their empire

It’s been a rocky relationship, this tantalizing, frustrating, on-again off-again thing between British rock and the U.S. audience. But like obsessed lovers, neither partner seems able to walk away. Despite the repeated disillusionment and dashed hopes that stretch from Oasis and the Stone Roses to the Prodigy and the Libertines, everybody is ready to try again.

So suddenly there were four brand-new British acts -- the Kaiser Chiefs, Maximo Park, Bloc Party and Goldie Lookin Chain -- playing Los Angeles this week, and they were just the advance guard of a reconstituted English army that’s massing on the horizon, where Razorlight, Kasabian, the Futureheads and more wait their turns.

Several theories have been advanced on the reason for this resurgence, including the decline of electronic dance music and manufactured pop, but there’s little doubt that it’s largely a response to a perceived void in quality music.

The Kaiser Chiefs’ singer Ricky Wilson thinks it goes back to the aftermath of the White Stripes’ and the Strokes’ success in England a few years ago.

“On the backs of the Strokes and the White Stripes they started sending over lesser bands,” he said this week, “selling them on the fact that they might have once spoken to Jack White in a bar or they once shined the Strokes’ shoes.

“So we got a lot of rubbish for a while. And bands like Bloc Party, Futureheads, Razorlight and us, we were probably sitting in our bedrooms thinking, ‘You know, we can’t take this anymore.’ We were all plotting.... Like Americans, the British are very proud people, and we wanted to show the world what we could do.”

Sounds good, but will things be different this time?

This week’s L.A. crash course wasn’t enough to provide a definitive answer, but the shows did offer some promising indicators.

None of the performances was a jaw-dropping, hysteria-generating, life-changing revelation, but maybe that’s the idea. These players seem to be taking a more cautious approach, making sure the songs and the sound are solidly in place and that the attitude doesn’t outweigh the substance. They’re the kind of suitors who don’t sweep you off your feet, but might stick around a little longer.

Not that it’s particularly stodgy. The Kaiser Chiefs’ Wilson is an unfailingly ebullient frontman who clearly relishes his role. At one point during the Leeds-based band’s headlining show at the Troubadour on Monday, he climbed to the top of the lighting tower next to the stage and dropped his microphone into the crowd, letting the fans sing the chorus of “I Predict a Riot,” a song that’s received some exposure on KROQ-FM (106.7).

And if it weren’t for attitude there couldn’t be a Goldie Lookin Chain. After midnight at Spaceland on Monday, these eight young men from Newport, South Wales, milled about on the stage, looking like utterly ordinary working-class lads out for a pint (and maybe a fight).

Then suddenly, with a blast of beats on the speakers, they turned into the stomping, synchronized hip-hop troupe that’s been described as the Welsh Wu-Tang, firing out raps both silly (“Half Man, Half Machine”) and satirical (“Guns Don’t Kill People, Rappers Do”). Like their album “Straight Outta Newport,” which comes out in the States May 10, it was an irresistible, oddly euphoric experience.

London’s Bloc Party, which sold out the Troubadour on Tuesday, might have the deepest, most developed sound of all the arrivals, and a growing audience thanks to the presence of its song “Banquet” on KROQ’s play list. Fronted by the quietly charismatic singer-guitarist Kele Okereke, whose urgent yelp gives the songs an air of loneliness and desperation, the quartet excavated a British post-punk landscape populated by the severe, jittery likes of Gang of Four and Joy Division.

The Kaiser Chiefs, with a sound that ranges from Devo-like bounciness (“Everyday I Love You Less and Less”) to the poppish, punkish “Riot,” and Newcastle’s Maximo Park also zero in on ‘80s elements.

Third-billed on the Kaiser Chiefs’ show, Maximo Park showed less interest in catchy hooks than the headliner, but songs such as “The Coast Is Always Changing” and “Apply Some Pressure” captured youthful confusion and intensity with an energy and melodic ambition reminiscent of the Smiths and Pulp.

Singer Paul Smith, wearing a suit and tie and looking like a really angry Jerry Seinfeld, battled a fever and did the splits, and his herky-jerky moves at one point got so violent that he fell flat on his back.

“There was a real energy from the crowd, considering that we were a support act and it’s our first time in America,” Smith said the next day, before Maximo Park and Goldie Lookin Chain teamed up for a show at Cinespace in Hollywood. “I was just really pleased at the way that people responded to the songs.”

The Chiefs’ Wilson is also encouraged by the U.S. reaction to his band, which made a strong impression in its L.A. debut at Spaceland in January.

“I’ve been told not to expect a lot of energy from L.A. and New York audiences, but I got the exact opposite,” the 26-year-old singer said this week. “I’ve had a great time, and people seem to be jumping up and down and singing and enjoying it as much as I enjoy being on stage, which is quite a lot.”

“The fact that it’s happening in America is just testament to the fact that there’s a lot of interesting and good music being made in Britain,” said Smith, who’s also 26. “And it makes sense for that to translate across the world. There’s no real barriers.

“I’ve got a very strong belief that the music we make is a universal kind of music. It speaks to people of emotions and deep-rooted things that everybody can identify with.... I think that’s what will push us through to people in America.”