There are few cooler dance singles than last year’s “Club Foot,” Kasabian’s breakout song. Blending dance grooves with swaggering Brit-rock, “Kasabian” was a mixed bag, but enjoyable overall.

On the follow-up, “Empire,” the boys seem to have run completely out of ideas. The title cut, released as the first single, is essentially a rehash of “Club Foot,” while most of the rest of the album eschews the dance-floor vibe that defined the band’s debut.

This stylistic flip could be due in part to the departure of lead guitarist Christopher Karloff, whose infatuation with dance music largely determined the musical direction on the band’s self-titled debut. Also, following the success of the first album, frontman Tom Meighan’s already-astronomical ego seems to have grown. Meighan — known for insulting artists like Pete Doherty, Julian Casablancas and the band the Test Icicles — needed an ego boost about as much as a lobster needs a ceiling fan.

The most depressing part of “Empire” is that, when it’s good, it’s very, very good. The frenetic “Shoot the Runner” is pure, sneering, swaggering rock and roll, channeling early Oasis better than early Oasis ever did. “Stuntman” hits hard, fast and aggressive, bursting with more energy than any song the band has recorded. And “The Doberman,” for all it’s pretentious self-indulgence, is actually a well-constructed song, with many different components coming together to make a whole song.

But the rest of the album is just boring. The dance parts aren’t as danceable as they should be, most of the rock parts don’t rock as hard as they need to, and the production job makes everything sound vaguely artificial.

Hopefully the band will learn from mistakes next time around, because even when the members are a bit off, they show potential. They could out-dance the Rapture, out-dress Franz Ferdinand and out-rock Towers of London if they put their mind to it. But as long as they’re stuck in this boring experimentation rut , none of that is going to happen anytime soon.

Evan Thorne is a music critic for the

Northern Star.