Kings of Leon...are they really that good?
Thoughts_Arrive
Melbourne, Australia Posts: 15,165
I've not yet had a go at listening to their albums but keep seeing TV ads here promoting their albums.
The ad hypes them up, so I am wondering are they worth a listen?
Excuse my ignorance I ignore what's hot and mainstream.
The ad hypes them up, so I am wondering are they worth a listen?
Excuse my ignorance I ignore what's hot and mainstream.
Adelaide 17/11/2009, Melbourne 20/11/2009, Sydney 22/11/2009, Melbourne (Big Day Out Festival) 24/01/2014
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If you do want to check them out, I would probably start out with either Because of the Times or Aha Shake Heartbreak, depending on what you tend to listen to... Aha Shake is more raw, BOTT is more polished. Their first album, Youth and Young Manhood, is very raw, and (natural progression) their latest album Only By The Night is the most polished and mainstream.
You may love them, you may hate them. You'll never know until you try it.
Their first two albums (Aha Shake Heartbreak, Youth & Young Manhood) are very different from their last two. Much more garage rock sounding. Kind of like the Strokes only with balls, southern weirdness, and a hard rocking edge.
I dig the new one...
I checked out their early albums when they toured with PJ but I just couldn't get into them.
-my dad after hearing Not for You for the first time on SNL .
i agree with this. they're at their best when they mix up the setlist with old & new.
www.cluthelee.com
www.cluthe.com
FYI to the OP: this is what you say if you want to appear cool. This way you can acknowledge their goodness while still maintaining your "I'm too indie and unique to like anything remotely poppy or mainstream" edge.
www.cluthelee.com
www.cluthe.com
remotely pop or mainstream? this is a PJ board.. Pearl Jam are mainstream to a point and popular. I'm one of many who say the new sound sucks but I mean bands like the hold steady and MMJ are more popular now... They never changed their style to be more popular... This is what people are getting at. I'm fine with KOL before their last album but they sought after this huge fame unlike no other indie band before. Even one of the Gallagher brothers from Oasis said they sold out (which is saying a lot).
You can still play big stadiums like MSG and keep your integrity (i.e MMJ, Neil Young etc. etc.). KOL have changed their musical style for the bad. PJ, Silverchair and a lot of other bands changed their styles but they didn't sacrifice their integrity for a few more dollars and teeny booper fans. I have seen KOL live many times before they became huge but the last time I saw them I noticed a shift in their fan demographic. Like what you like but a lot of people have been turned off them now because of the choice they made to change their image, music and what the stand for.
What good is being in a rock band if you're not going to be able to get away with nailing jailbait all the time on tour? More power to KoL for going where the action is. They're still writing the songs they want, so who the fuck are you to decide that they're faking? Maybe they just changed as they grew up from teeny boppers themselves into young musicians. Nirvana did the same thing from Bleach to Nevermind.
I love the damned if you do, damned if you don't approach. Radiohead changes their sound and they're innovators. Hold Steady doesn't and they're just staying true to themselves. Oasis doesn't and they're just one-trick ponies. KoL does and they're clearly selling out. I will never be able to figure out the indie rules of etiquette for when you're allowed to change your sound and when you're not.
I went to a KoL show recently on Halloween. The band rocked, but man did their demographic fanbase suck (because that's what's important... if their fans aren't cool, the band can't be either right?). I would have had a much better time at the show if instead of being surround by smoking hot girls in slutty halloween costumes shaking their asses all night, I could have been in a crowd with REAL music fans... you know, single pale white dudes with emo glasses and funky clothes all standing and taking notes for the review they'll write on their blog that no one reads tomorrow. Now THAT is what I call rock and roll!
www.cluthelee.com
www.cluthe.com
wow :P
I couldn't have said it better myself..you nailed it.
Their new album is pretty decent, i've listened to it more than a couple times after the initial first few listens, so that says something. And they were very good at lolla before pj in 07, one of the better bands I saw at the festival.
As for them selling out and such, I don't really know any of their stuff prior to them touring with pj... I did see that they looked like tools on SNL, (and by tool I mean clothes and haircuts that looked like the Jonas brothers) hehe.
To the OP, I say stop reading this thread, go listen and see if you like them. If you do great, if not, that's ok too.
What is your problem? Seriously, you sit on this board all day and attack anyone that has an opinion different than yours. Didn't you get banned from the old board for doing the same types of things. You have a response to 95% of the threads on this board and most of them are attacking someone who doesn't think along the same lines as you.
They haven't forgotten their craft. If they wanted to write more stuff like the first 2 albums, they would. Just because you don't like the new stuff doesn't mean they're not making the music they want or only seeking fame. Maybe they like playing tunes that people enjoy hearing. You know how much it would suck to see Pearl Jam if they played a set full of songs like Cropduster? I dig a band that takes pleasure in delivering the music their fans respond to. Would that PJ would stop shelving songs like Down and Sad for shit b-material.
I'm just incredibly tired of hearing people complain about how KoL used to be cool, but now their clothes are too nice and their music is too catchy. It's old and annoying.
After years spent building a career on the enduringly romanticized Stillwater archetype, Kings of Leon have laterally shifted from one easily understood linear narrative (festival band) to another (arena rock band). Dropping the transparently hayseed act, the band could have turned an artistic corner; yet the first single from Only By the Night is called "Sex on Fire", so if there was any debate about whether Kings of Leon are in on their own joke, I think it can be put to rest. If we're misreading them, we're missing out on one corker of a comedy album based on an "SNL"-level premise: What if Bono got lost in the Blue Ridge Mountains and was replaced by a local yokel? (Suggested band name: Y'All2.)
But even the move from "southern Strokes" to "southern U2" is way better in theory than in practice-- these are the same clunky Kings of Leon songs, just now presented in an incredibly weird context. It all starts with Caleb Followill's never-ending need to play to type, and if you've kept up to this point, you know the drill-- though his band has toured the world several times over, dude can't see past his own dick. He sings terribly on Only By the Night, any modicum of youth and young manhood compromised by "real talk" overemoting and an accent that seems to have no geographical origin.
But why go on when Followill is more than happy to hoist himself on his own petard, doling his typical mix of stock characterization, open misogyny, and bizarre non-sequitirs. You can hear the brooms sweeping as the lonesome guitars of "Revelry" attempt some sort of last-call poignancy, but it's spoiled from the time Followill opens a mouth full of Meatloaf-- "What a night for a dance, you know I'm a dancin' machine/ With the fire in my bones and the sweet taste of kerosene." This goes on before you get the dominant KoL ethos on the chorus: "With the hardest of hearts I still feel full of pain/ See the time we shared it was precious to me/ But all the while I was dreaming of revelry." It's basically "The One I Love" with no riff and no irony.
Meanwhile, "Sex on Fire" turns out to be disturbingly literal, while the dopey travelogue of "Manhattan" has Caleb waxing with the naïve enthusiasm of a senior yearbook quote: "We're gonna set this fire we're gonna stoke it up/ We're gonna sip this wine and pass the cup/ We're gonna show this town how to kiss these stars," and it's nearly impossible to stifle your laughter when he punctuates each verse with a smarmy soul-papa "I SAAAAIIIID!" All that's missing is the attendant video where Caleb walks the NYC streets and gives dap to passers-by while the band taps away at their idea of funk. You'd figure "17" would be right in their wheelhouse, because what's a better Kings of Leon topic than underage pussy? But after the first line (I'll spot you "Winger" as a hint and let you guess what it is), it just sort of trails off, leaving the last memorable moment of an album that still has about 20 minutes to go.
No longer steeped in Dixieland signifers, Kings of Leon now weirdly owe a debt to Washington state. If the rumbling toms, splashy cymbals, and cascading synth strings of songs like "Notion" or "I Want You" sound familiar, I'm willing to bet you have a copy of Sunny Day Real Esate's The Rising Tide or a recent Death Cab record. Strange bedfellows, and not really the right ones-- while the latter two were trying to adjust their modest hooks and personal lyrics to a larger scale, Kings of Leon have always been as emotionally cavernous as the drum sound here, and when the tempo slows, ladies and gentlemen, we are floating in swamp. Followill is haunted by all that he can't leave behind, trying to have it both ways with riffs that are supposed to bellow with reverb and bite with distortion. The band never soars, instead mostly muddling in a bog of muffled echo that liberally applies Caleb's cottonmouth to every other instrument.
At its best, Only By the Night at least gives the impression that Kings of Leon is actually an interesting band that would be exponentially and immediately improved with someone even average at the controls (call it the Tavaris Jackson Corollary). Musically, "Closer" sets the bar unrealistically high for the rest of the album, building on squeaking, modulated keys, tricky polyrhythms, and a solid melody unfortunately piledrived by Followill's self-pity ("You took my heart and you took my soul.../ Leaving me stranded in love on my own"). "Crawl" could pass for something off the first Secret Machines record with its hydraulic, distorted bass and hotly mixed percussion, but even before they can seal the deal with some dubious conspiracy mongering (something about the red, white, and blue crucifying you), you get the usual KoL idea of sweetalk: "You better learn to crawl before I walk away." Next thing you know, "Sex on Fire" starts and Kings of Leon's fourth album has peaked after seven minutes. Surely, we can do better for the platonic ideal of a rock band than four guys gunning for a spot rightfully inhabited by My Morning Jacket but instead coming up with the best songs 3 Doors Down never wrote
Thanks for reminding me why I never read Pitchfork. Holy pretentious batman!
You can splice out lyrics from any band anywhere and make them seem stupid. Personally, I like the misogyny and simplicity. Call me un-PC... I listen to rock music to have fun, not for life lessons. I've got the literate writings of actual thinkers if I want philosophical meditation. Plus, I LIKE U2.
It cracks me up how cookie cutter Pitchfork this review is.
How to write a Pitchfork review:
1. Song X sounds like Band Y doing Band Z with (insert faux-literary metaphor to make reviewer seem like the lost gem of his college creative writing class).
2. Repeat, song by song.
3. At end, dismiss as weak effort of band trying to sound like band C (cool band) but ending up sounding like Band D (band that has sold more than 1000 copies).
Holly shit :shock: do you even know what that word means?
Learn to discuss with maturity, you might actually learn something.
1. I have no problem with opinions different from mine. I DO have problems with people using that bullshit "their music has changed so clearly they've sold their souls to attract teeny bopper fans and are no better than the jonas brothers" argument.
2. I know exactly what misogyny means. It was very popular back when rock and roll was fun. You know, before everyone decided that rock music had to make some grand spiritual mission statement and only appeal to a narrow demographic of angst-ridden 20-somethings to be of any merit. Led Zeppelin were big on it, as I recall.
they are great live too. they really get me moving
they weren't like that when they first started. I guess money will do that to you if you're bunch of sons of a Preacher from TN
Got my tickets to see them at Bill Graham on 5/21. That's the location where magic happened back in 2006, you know
The whole world will be different soon the whole world will be RELIEVED
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