Review - Kings of Leon: Only By the Night

Originally published in Soundcheck Magazine (9/24/08)

What are Kings of Leon? Their story and look seem more like some 1970s rock band biopic than an actual 21st century entity. They are like Stillwater from Almost Famous. When you try to come up with an idea in your head of what an American rock band is, chances are the image looks a lot like Kings of Leon. Is it even possible that they are a living, breathing unit – in 2008, no less?

Not only is it possible, but the Followill family has proven that it is a smashing success, as well. 2007’s Because of the Times dusted off your father’s crackling wax copies of U2’s The Joshua Tree, Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ Damn the Torpedoes and dropped them in a blender for a glorious frappe of echoed loneliness and tumbleweed dreams that became, despite all its contrivances and borrowed ideas, the best album of the year. This happened for two reasons: stark honesty and the striking, harrowing voice of Caleb Followill. Not since Big Brother & the Holding Company has a band been swept up and tossed into the starlight in such a way simply on the sheer muscular power of a set of pipes.

Here we are now, a year later, and Kings of Leon already have unleashed their “Fever Dog”. How do they follow it up? Only By the Night notions that it’s by doing it all over again. Night ultimately is not as consistently fulfilling as Times, but it continues musically where that album left off, following the same emotional unfolding of Times, from the moody, atmospheric opening track to the feel-good closure of the album’s finale.

Things don’t quite start out smoothly, though. Opener “Closer” – how’s that for irony? – is a bit meandering and is more of a preface than an opening chapter. The second track, “Crawl”, isn’t much better. It features Caleb at his most disinterested, and to make matters worse, the verse melodies strangely recall Toto’s 1982 soft-rock hit, “Rosanna”, which never is a good thing.

The album really starts to take off, though, on the band’s first single, “Sex on Fire”. Awful, slightly diva-esque music video aside, the infectious song sounds like a sequel to “California Waiting” from 2003’s Holy Roller Novocaine, and it is the perfect forum in which to showcase Caleb’s emotive, lost-puppy howl.

From there out, the album is quite consistent in its dusty, ramshackle excellence. There’s the bass-driven beauty of “Manhattan”, the lyrically-curious tale of a broken home in “17”, and the rumbling, steady build of “Be Somebody”, which finally culminates in a rage of grunge riffs and pounding drums that hark back to vintage Soundgarden.

Only By the Night doesn’t better its predecessor, but by no means does that make it a failure. It’s a solid album, one that continues developing a southern hybrid style that has proven to work for Kings of Leon and is quite unique among today’s generation of bands. And if nothing else, it gives us another chance to let that incredible voice send chills down our spines.

– Andy Pareti