Kings of Leon Album Review – Has their Sundown Come Around?

Southern rockers, Kings of Leon release their 5th full-length studio album, Come Around Sundown this week amid disgruntled murmurs from self-proclaimed ‘original’ fans, unsure of where the band’s bracing raw energy went. It begs the question, is a great band defined by their ability to perforate the cling-filmed expectations of fans by pushing beyond the expected 3rd/4th LP plateau?

One recurring line you hear a lot of bands churn out in interviews around about this career juncture goes something like:

“It came to a point where we just started making music for us - music we liked. And if our fans liked it too, then that was just a bonus.”

It’s a maturation curtailed somewhat in the self-indulgence of commercial success, but it’s one that makes sense.  As fans, we have to cling to the hope that bands are broadening their own influences and continuing to experiment in producing different sounds, as we are in trawling blogs & vintage record stores to seek them out.
  
Come Around Sundown is certainly a unique addition to King of Leon’s body of work and regardless of whether it will get a good burn on your Mp3 player or not, it remains musically unambitious. I fear the precedent for whatever buzz this album generates, was set when the Grammy Award hit the shelf and KOL went from a hardcore band to a household brand in 2009. As a whole, Come Around Sundown is even more placid than 2008’s Only By The Night which marked the first big steps the boys took away from the fuzz and deep into the studio (and church).




The first single off the LP, ’Radioactive’ has an opening riff that hooks you in with its potential to explode, until an offensively wet rhythm guitar barely rises to back it (Slash is that you? And are you on a Valium bender?). Caleb’s vocals also seem more tidied than ever: the grit & screech that used to whip-crack the edge of phrases in classics like ’King of the Rodeo’, a distant memory (as is the lyric “All out of fags and I just can’t wait”). Interestingly, the path to clean production the band seem to have skewed onto must have been one of their own volition; songwriter/producer Angelo Petraglia having worked with the boys since they rolled out of Sunday school to sign with RCA Records at the start of the decade.
  
‘No Money’ would have to be one of the album’s standouts and one of the few tracks where Nathan is drumming to a sweat-inducing tempo. Yet there is something sadly lacking in the mix: when backing vocal harmonies wash over the chorus, they suck the weight out of the major riffs and however much you try to feel the reverb in your chest, it just never quite moves you like you know it should (live - maybe be a different story). In tracks like ‘Back Down South’ the Followill boys have bust well and truly through the saloon doors to produce an unashamed Country Western ditty - it’s definitely tumbleweed territory – and I don’t even know if they grow in the region they are singing about.


   
It’s as if Come Around Sundown is living in the chorus of ‘McFearless’ (off Because of the times (2007)- an album I felt stitched the band’s stage energy & studio sound impeccably, despite Pitchfork’s harrowing review). The chorus is epic with its open major chords that stretch and soar to the lyrics “Where I stand, it’s my role, it’s my soul”. But the power of this track lies in the chorus running off the back of the rampant percussion, messy riffs and scratchy-tailed vocals of the verses: the ones that tore us up from the start on Youth & Young Manhood (2003). Where Kings of Leon once made music like a dirty whiskey shot: burning down your throat, toxifying your blood and grating at your muscles till they jerk to life; they now fail to pack a punch.

Undeniably, the battle between “true original fans” and “bandwagon jumpers”, meshed in with this quandary will continue to rattle on, and if it’s a bi-product of people feeling passionate about music they’ve sought out and supported in dingy back-street bars, then it’s not entirely unwarranted. Kings of Leon themselves admitted to NME they struggle with ‘Only By the Night’ fans in the crowd not recognising their older material (they probably wouldn’t like it to be honest) – if you compare their slower numbers ‘Trani’ (2003 – check the epic live video at T in the Park ’04 below) with Grammy Award winning ‘Use Somebody’ (2008), the music speaks to polar opposite audiences.




So is the tirade of backlash from “indie-snobs” unjustified or is just that they feel they’ve been left with a sound they can’t relate to anymore, that’s tangled up in overpriced merchandise & clichéd cinematography (Check out the video for Radioactive if you don’t know what I mean).

As a music-lover, chart positions are meaningless belt-notches and bands can revel or negate them as they see fit:  it’s when commercial success and the lifestyle it affords becomes the endgame that true creativity seems to fade. Hell, Paul McCartney shifts between his countless estates and you don’t hear anyone whinging about that (Heather Mills excluded). 

In a recent interview with Triple J’s Tom & Alex, Caleb said,

 “Hopefully the people that listened to it online [the leaked version], even if they think its shit they’ll still go out and buy it, that’s what I hope for.”  (He goes on to discuss affording a beach house after this album hits it *cringe*)

If this kind of sentiment is entrenched in the bands new “mainstream” arrangements, then it’s no wonder the indie kids have their skin-tight jeans in a twist!

For better or worse, with the release of Come Around Sundown Kings of Leon have clearly said so long to the slow nights and turned to greet the rock-arena with open arms – and as fans, we can take it, leave it, or sit back and rant their misgivings to the empty blogisphere (snap).

I’m not sure about you, but it all seems too soon for Kings of Leon to kick the bucket into mainstream obscurity; but as Caleb once sang:
    
“Too young to die, but old is the grave”

You can stream Come Around Sundown in full until the 18th on the Triple J website.

Let us know what you think!