KINGS OF LEON A-Ha Shake Heartbreak

KINGS OF LEON

A-Ha Shake Heartbreak

£ 9.99

In Youth & Young Manhood the Kings Of Leon have already delivered one of the best rock albums of all time. For the follow-up they’ve placed the bar even higher, with a raw energy most bands can only dream of. Hopefully it will be perched comfortably atop 2004’s Best Albums rankings.

TRACKLISTINGS
1 Slow Night, So Long (3.54)
2 King Of The Rodeo (2.25)
3 Taper Jean Girl (3.05)
4 Pistol Of Fire (2.20)
5 Milk (4.00)
6 The Bucket (2.55)
7 Soft (2.59)
8 Razz (2.15)
9 Day Old Blues (3.33)
10 Four Kicks (2.09)
11 Velvet Snow (2.11)
12 Rememo (3.22)
13 Where Nobody Knows (2.23




Their debut, Youth and Young Manhood, sold 800,000 copies in England, but of all the guitar bands that emerged in the wake of the Strokes they seemed the least likely to survive. At a time when most bands attracting hyperbole were revivalists, the Kings of Leon alone seemed to be reviving something that was never much cop in the first place: the 1970s Southern boogie of the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd. While their peers were contrived, spinning yarns about shadowy svengalis or being brother and sister, the Kings of Leon - if some reports were to be believed - were the most contrived of the lot. They claimed to be the Followills: three sons of a Pentecostal preacher defrocked for drinking, and their cousin.
The biggest dilemma facing Kings of Leon and their contemporaries is that the music business, the music press and music fans all currently require instant gratification. We want new bands to emerge fully-formed, with a perfectly honed sound, image and back-story to market. The New Rock Revolutionaries, as the music press unfortunately dubbed them, were happy to oblige, hence the on-stage uniforms and tall tales. But a band that emerges fully-formed invariably finds it impossible to progress.

This may be why Aha Shake Heartbreak stops the listener dead. It just sounds like a vast improvement: the songwriting more adventurous, the palette of inspiration wider.

It may simply be a case of travel broadening the mind. During their adolescence, the Followills claim to have listened to nothing other than their father's car radio. Their European success has exposed them to other influences. There is a distinct Joy Division spikiness about the guitars on opener Slow Night, So Long. Razz is a fantastic and daring attempt to marry two diametrically opposed genres: post-punk funk and the stoner rock of Creedence Clearwater Revival. While it is true that the throwaway Velvet Snow sounds not unlike the Strokes, it is an inspired, frantically energised Strokes, rather than the weary, confused, strugglers of Room on Fire.

The whole album drips with confidence. They are self-assured enough to turn the opening two tracks into a kind of medley, linked by an oddly crepuscular passage. Meanwhile, vocalist Caleb Followill outrageously mangles every word into incomprehensibility. He slurs. He whines. On one notable occasion, during the chorus of Day Old Blues, he yodels.

"He's so the purity, a shaven and a mourning, and standing on a pigeon toe in his disarray," opens King of the Rodeo. This is merely arch and bewildering. However, when meaning emerges from behind the gush of overwrought imagery, you immediately wish it would disappear again.

A 2003 NME cover story celebrating their new-found success claimed that the Followills enjoy an activity the article insisted on calling "screwin'". Sadly, when they start writin' about screwin', the person listenin' soon feels like endin' it all. It's as if they have their sights set on scooping a hitherto-unknown musical equivalent of the Literary Review's Bad Sex award. A song seldom passes without a reference to "showing off your something shaved and lacy", an offer to "pop myself in your body" or a demand to "let your perfect nipple show". The penis-related firearm metaphor makes an unwelcome reappearance on Pistol of Fire. Most charming of all, a streak of grim misogyny runs through several songs - "cunts watch their bodies, no room for make up", offers the delightful chorus of Taper Jean Girl. "Three of the four of us lost our virginity after the last record," Nathan Followill explained recently, and faced with stuff like Taper Jean Girl you can believe it.

It is less malevolent than witless - the kind of thing you would expect from a bunch of rednecks that have suddenly found themselves rock stars, with all the attendant trappings. But the music on Aha Shake Heartbreak suggests something else entirely, a sophistication that belies their hick image and outstrips their contemporaries. Ignore the lyric booklet and you have one of the more impressive albums of 2004.

Taken for the Gardian News Paper