KINGS OF LEON Only by the Night By Christopher Copeland
W W W. F O U R WA L L S D O W N .C O M
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ther than fleeting glances in lines, most of what I had about Kings of Leon was am lent, or at least it caused m ambivalent. The first subst report I heard about the came via a friend who saw live and reported back tha melted his face off.
n headheard mbivame to be tantial Kings w them at they
Another friend in the quickly earned the Nashville music biz plaudits (gushings?) (which is, at least in of Rolling Stone, none the grand narrative beof which are textbook ing constructed about methods for buildthem, home to the ing street cred. They Kings) thought they seemed like rock and were pricks. I don’t roll’s answer to Gosknow if he’d met them sip Girl: The only or not, but that speaks way to like them was of, at the very least, a ironically, and ironic severe distaste of the fetishes are becommusic. My brother reing clichéd. served for them the Last autumn same kind of malice however Kings of he once saved for boy Leon released Only bands By the Night. The I heard the people I knew who loved music sounded them loved them more, sonically spabut the tell-tale reaction cious. I heard the music came from the people who sounded garage grunge had hated them. It seemed (not compatible with sonilike a collective tucking of cally spacious if you’re the tails behind the legs, keeping tabs). They sheepish admissions that looked liked The Strokes, the new Kings record was they toured with U2, they really good. My Nashville
friend highly complimented a song by “this new band” his friend asked him to listen to; thus tricked into submission, he discovered that even pricks can make great music. Then, my brother, with no trace of irony, gave me the new record for Christmas; at the dirty riff of “Crawl,” I was sold. I come to Kings of Leon with no prior knowledge. For all I know the brothers (and cousin) Followill have completely sold out some “original sound” or vibe or image that came along with the other records. While I intend to find out if this is so,
I don’t really care if they did nor not. Nor does it bother me in the least that the sound they embody now has been completely lifted from other influences (most notably U2). The riff from “Crawl” is pure Achtung Baby-era Edge, just as he was discovering his fuzz petals. Likewise, the intro to “Use Somebody,” with the ringing guitars and choir-like vocals might have been scrapped from the floors of a Dublin studio after the Atomic Bomb sessions. The Edge, circa 1987, used effects to render the simplicity of three notes sonically spacious; Matthew Followill circa 2008 Page 4 of 9
“Yes, the Kings have stolen, but the theft has been accomplished with grace” does the same on “Manhattan.” Yet the Kings differentiate themselves from U2 in one manner: the chorus bass riffs on “Manhattan” as well as “Be Somebody” are more busy than Adam Clayton ever cared to get, they are simple, lively, and they carry both tunes. Kings of Leon also manage to sound like The Strokes albeit less broody. The tandem guitar parts are less than intricate and meld together in a way that masks a lack of shredding talent, but didn’t The Strokes remind us that shredding talent is not the
heart of rock and roll (as if we couldn’t have learned that lesson much earlier from C.C. DeVille)? Perhaps the influence of The Strokes comes across most forcefully in image: The Kings write short, simple, rock songs. They wear old t-shirts and fail to shave. They appear nonplussed in live performances. If The Strokes saved rock and roll in 2001, then Kings of Leon are the beatific vision of that salvation. There is also the matter of The Rolling Stones and James Brown. Keith Richards Page 5 of 9
could play two simple chords with the hubris to believe (and be correct in doing so) that those two chords carried the song; that sentiment is palpable underneath the fuzz of “Crawl” and sneaks into “Sex on Fire,” the first single. Caleb Followill has the chops to scream like the godfather of soul on “Manhattan” and “Notion,” and unlike Dave Matthews or Chris Martin (who wears his falsetto like a mask) one doesn’t feel that Caleb is toying with the limits of his range; he simply sounds like he has soul.
And speaking of Chris Martin, several cuts from Only by the Night feel like Coldplay when they were trying hard not to be Radiohead and ended up sounding like U2 instead, which brings the listener back to square one. Yes, the Kings have stolen, but the theft has been accomplished with such grace, such force that we stand and applaud and believe the purloined object belonged to them all along. Kings of Leon are the most transparently derivative band that somehow sound only like themselves.
“They seemed like rock and roll’s answer to Gossip Girl” Page 6 of 9
Not that the Kings lack any originality. Caleb’s voice has such a distinct texture it becomes a sleight of hand, something we pay attention to while so many other musical influences are digested and reproduced right under our noses. For every sound like U2, there is a sound that is nothing like U2, from the industrial eeriness of “Closer” to the synth riff near the end of “I Want You” that sounds like something from the Brooklyn experimental music scene. The Kings deftly employ that synth for a mere 8 bars: just enough to shift the listener slightly but not enough to define the song. For every Richards-esque riff there is a guitar sound like the
bridge of “Be Somebody” that eschews all sense of the blues. The most original aspect of Only by the Night however is the lyrics, which teeter on the edge of melodrama before gaining an earnest and sometimes penetrating equilibrium. A song that begins, “I like to dance all night” forebodes either the newest teenpop phenom or Lionel Richie. Yet in “Manhattan,” Caleb blends romantic images of sipping wine and kissing stars with the dour naturalism of hunting and skinning hides. The song probes the conflicting aspects of the American Dream, musing on freewheeling city nightlife and the cost of that freedom— Page 7 of 9
“Every drop that spills on every plot of ground, it’s all for you for what you found.” “Closer,” sung from a vampire’s perspective avoids banality by relegating the vampiric aspects of the narrator’s experience to casual references--”2000 years of chasing’s taking its toll”--while emphasizing more human aspects like the lack of mercy often shown in fulfilling desire. “17” begins with a clichéd musing about a too-young girl but veers into genuine sympathy rather than a Kip Winger-ish desire to deflower. While “Cold Desert” offers a high school freshman an easy symbol to decode, the emotionally locked down male is rendered in an original way:
“I never cried when I was feeling down; I’ve always been scared of the sound.” The ultimate skill in Caleb’s lyrics however is that he endows them with a poet’s flourishes, weaving imagery, alliteration, rhyme and metaphor like a writer; not a singer or a rocker or an angsty teen who writes poems in a beat up journal, but a writer. If the content becomes sophomoric at points, these poetic elements certainly mitigate it, and the underlying music propping up this lyrical dexterity relieves the listener of any need for ironic adoration. Ultimately, Kings of Leon have one fantastic album, and I suspect that the back catalog is pretty strong as well. PerPage 8 of 9
haps the thing they stole from U2 that has contributed most to their success is the wherewithal to stick with the same producer (Angelo Petraglia) who, much like Daniel Lanois did for U2, helps them mature rather than rest on old successes. Let’s just hope that their evolution doesn’t involve a two-album detour from this method.
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