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Kings of Leon
Only By The Night
Over the years, I've learned that my first impression of an album is usually not to be trusted. For instance, I thought Black Holes & Revelations was lame at first, but it turned out that once I read the lyrics I thought it was an excellent album. The exact opposite happened with Becoming X and Witching Hour, which I thought were hot shit at first. Time, however, has not been kind to them, though I'd certainly hesitate to say that they're bad. And I'm not always initially wrong, either, as I still love St. Elsewhere just as much as I did when it first came out. I still like to pretend, like Brad, that Coldplay only has two to three albums under their belt. Still, I think there have been a lot of cases where my initial reaction has not always been spot on.
Getting into Only By The Night, then, my initial reaction was, "wow, 'Sex on Fire' sure is awesome!" I've listened to this album a lot since it's been out, and I think in the end it was worth the money. It's not a ten out of ten -- maybe a six or seven -- but I feel that's mostly due to a few bogged-down tracks in there that serve to slow the album down.
See, the thing is, Kings of Leon have cultivated a sort of trademark sound on this album. If I had to try to put it to words, I'd say it's something like "reverb set to high, wall of guitars, crooning." So, basically, garage rock. Bear with me. The stipulation here is that all the songs sound more or less like this. On the better tracks it's not a problem at all, but on the more "filler-ish" tracks it gets to be a X&Y Coldplay kinda situation where nothing in particular really stands out. Now, this album isn't nearly as bad as X&Y, but damn if doesn't have a similar quality about it that kind of sucks you in, phases in and out, and in the end you struggle to pull out the highlights from amongst the confusion.
It's not a wall of sound in the classic sense of the term, though. Kings of Leon like to play around with letting certain instruments drop out and back in again, creating a kind of "empty" or negative space, if you will, that differenciates it from the overproduced, glossy slock that we've all come to collectively dread. They let things slow down and brake down, but there's enough of a U2 influence flowing throughout that keeps things from being too jazzy.
"Sex on Fire," like I pointed out earlier, is the toe-tappingly, steering wheel-slappingly stand out song here. It seems to have found that good kind of quasi-mainstream appeal that so many bands strive for these days. Sure it's a rock song about sex or what have you, but it's all about the hook and it's tastefully done.
A song that also sports a pretty decent hook is "Notion," a little past halfway through. It's just long enough to get you into it, but not too long so that you get bored of it.
Right before it lies "17," where Caleb let his voice rise to a falsetto on the "een" in "she's only seventeen." Really, that's all the man would have to say to make this a good song already, but he has some other choice words to put in, and I can't fault him for it. I really do enjoy it when singers do interesting things with their voices, though, so this was a shoe-in for me.
"Manhattan" rides on the tails of the rather drab "Use Somebody," where the weakness of it's forebear makes its strength apparent. The percussion is well done here and plays well with Caleb's voice, wich tends to rise into a jolly shout every so often. The drums kinda take the forefront at times, forcing the wailing electric guitars to take a back seat and your ears to pay attention.
The opening track, "Closer," is also pretty unique in structure compared to the rest of the album. Since it's the first track, it doesn't have to try too hard to differentiate itself from the rest of the album besides a cool intro... but it's really different, anyway, and that's cool. The lyrics are also a bit more poetic.
I'd say "Revelry" is a pretty decent song, too, so that leaves you with "Crawl," "Use Somebody," "I Want You," "Be Somebody," and the too-late-to-prevent-the-late-album-bogmire "Cold Desert." They're not bad songs per se (okay, I don't like "I Want You" much at all), but they just don't stand out from one another enough. It doesn't help that things kind of slow down and mellow out near the end of the album, a trend I've never been a big fan of.
At the end of the day, though, do you know why I think Kings of Leon are an awesome band, despite probably being "way better live"? It's a band made of THREE BROTHERS (and a cousin [thanks for nothing, wikipedia]), and you wouldn't even know it. Keepin' it in the family, right?
Rock on, Followhills.
--Adam
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| | Posted 10/10/2008 5:01 AM - 15 Views - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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