So I came in late but being somewhat of a geek when it comes to music I went back and bought all their previous albums. Listening to their first album Youth and young manhood and not understanding many of the words coming out of the lead singers mouth I found myself nodding my head along to it, not really knowing what he was saying but enjoying it none the less. The track Red morning light opens the album and instantly kicks you square in the jaw with its strong and fast guitar riffs then keeping you going with Happy alone a song about something you don’t really understand because you can’t hear the words but it doesn’t matter because you can hear and feel that it has soul and meaning whatever he is saying. The album seems to bring you back down with Wasted time but only for a few seconds before again lashing out at you with another quick slap to the face. The album continues very much in the same vein of slapping and kicking you with its drunken mumbling rock n roll and eventually leading to its big finish and possibly the best track on their album, if not their best song ever, Holly Roller Novocaine and then the eventual hidden bonus track to show off their bluesy soulful side 8 minutes and 21 seconds into the final track. All in all a great album.
Fast forward to Because of the times and the change is ridiculous. Now you can you hear every word he is saying but you wish you couldn’t. It seems that Caleb Followill was a little embarrassed by his somewhat flimsy lyrics in the early days that he used to mumble them through long curly hair and a distorted microphone.
Their latest offering Come Around Sundown includes possibly their worst ever song Radioactive where they become what they were inevitably heading towards which was a U2 tribute band. The video is enough to make you want to puke as it feature the band frolicking in the sun with a load of seemingly peasant black kids as if to say we love everyone and we are all the same. Although I agree that we are all equal and all that, this just feel like the most patronising way to show it. It could be said that they are protesting too much even? Who knows? The Guardian had this to say about the album “the Kings of Leon have largely chosen – albeit through audibly gritted teeth – to stick fast to the Bono-approved stadium rock that caused Pitchfork to dub them Y'all 2.” They go on to finish by calling them “a band who've established, in a rather passive-aggressive way, that they don't want to make the music that made them famous any more, but haven't really thought what they want to do instead.”
Somewhere along the way it seems that two major changes have taken place with this band. The first major change is that they have become majorly successful. This has led to a change in attitude towards lyrics and their embarrassment towards them. It seems that the band no longer worry that they never actually say anything that is interesting or even makes sense in their songs.
The second major change is that the band has gone through a change of dress sense. In the early days they were a true rock band with the long hair Cuban heeled boots and a generally scruffy look. They were the kind of guys that could have looked equally at home in a soup kitchen line as well as onstage at the Hammersmith Apollo? Is it still called that?
Anyway somewhere down the line it seems that they have become victims of “the stylist”. Someone’s job it is to pick what clothes people should wear and how they should have their hair. Now days Kings of Leon look like they are being sponsored in equal measure by Top Man and Allsaints.
Kings of Leon recently cancelled a US tour amid “problems” within the band. It seems that maybe after years of making substandard Sky Sports Super Sunday soundtracks they are going to get back to making the kind of music that isn’t popular with stag parties. Either that or just hang up their guitars and Top Man store cards. Fingers crossed x
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