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It's difficult to talk about Kings of Leon without referring to them in the light of The Strokes. Kings had all the cool, the haircuts and riffs of their NYC compatriots, but a better biography. The story of their upbringing is so well known by now that there's no point in reprinting it, but it is rather ironic that the sons/nephews of a preacher in the Bible Belt would become some of the most renowned on-the-road party people since the Stones. Because this album, their second, is about all that. Specifically the mornings after.
And it's every bit as overpoweringly cool as you'd expect. First single "The Bucket" has all the riffs and the two-step drum beats we've come to expect after "Youth And Young Manhood", but with even less hanging around. Who needs choruses, after all? Elsewhere "Soft" deals with impotency, "Razz" has a delicious bassline and some lyrics that manage the difficult feat of being obscure and blatant at the same time. All of which is perfectly good, but it is difficult not to start comparing every tune to their counterparts on YAYM and "Is This It", such are the clear parallels between this and those two seminal works of the haircut and skin-tight jeans corner of the indie world.
But Kings have never tried to be original. It's all about the super-sharp guitar riffs ("Pistol of Fire" may well be Matthew Followill's best moment, even if it does still sound a bit much like "Spiral Staircase" off the first record), the almost unnecessarily sexy drawl that makes up the vocals, and, yes, the hair. Even without that beard.
So like "Room On Fire" (this isn't lazy journalism, promise), this is a record of evolution as opposed to revolution, a refining of a sound and a continuation of momentum. But like The Strokes, the Kings of Leon won't be able to pull the same trick three times and get away with it.
And it's every bit as overpoweringly cool as you'd expect. First single "The Bucket" has all the riffs and the two-step drum beats we've come to expect after "Youth And Young Manhood", but with even less hanging around. Who needs choruses, after all? Elsewhere "Soft" deals with impotency, "Razz" has a delicious bassline and some lyrics that manage the difficult feat of being obscure and blatant at the same time. All of which is perfectly good, but it is difficult not to start comparing every tune to their counterparts on YAYM and "Is This It", such are the clear parallels between this and those two seminal works of the haircut and skin-tight jeans corner of the indie world.
But Kings have never tried to be original. It's all about the super-sharp guitar riffs ("Pistol of Fire" may well be Matthew Followill's best moment, even if it does still sound a bit much like "Spiral Staircase" off the first record), the almost unnecessarily sexy drawl that makes up the vocals, and, yes, the hair. Even without that beard.
So like "Room On Fire" (this isn't lazy journalism, promise), this is a record of evolution as opposed to revolution, a refining of a sound and a continuation of momentum. But like The Strokes, the Kings of Leon won't be able to pull the same trick three times and get away with it.
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