Review: Kings of Leon: Youth and Young Manhood

I am invoking my powers as guest editor-at-large of Hongpong.com to change directions on a dime and write music reviews now. Today's review is the Kings of Leon with their album Youth and Young Manhood.

This album was recommended to me by a friend of mine, who shall be known only as Sad Sack. Sad Sack felt that the Kings of Leon would be an intersection between The Strokes and The Libertines, my favorite bands of the last ten years or so (The Strokes second album excepted- shiver) and Creedance Clearwater Revival, a great southern rock band of yore. Sad spoke of a high-energy band with the get-down and southern stank necessary to sate my thirst for Rock with a capital R. He urged me to listen to several songs in particular. I did- and then I listened to the whole album.

M'eh

Listening to the Kings of Leon is definitely more fun than a colonic. Being mangled in a fiery car wreck would definitely suck compared to listening to Kings of Leon. Front-row seats at a live-fire reenactment of the storming of Omaha Beach would be a way less desirable offer than front row seats to the Kings of Leon show. Hell, maybe they kick ass in concert, idunno- I only listened to their studio album.

And it was definitely NOT bad. In fact, some of it is quite good. There is some trilling, growling southern vocals. The band drives their songs with insistent bass lines and guitar riffs, and lays a few face-melters in over the top of the track just to make sure that we know they do not drive Volvos. Unfortunately for them, they had been introduced to me as the equals of a band fronted by Pete Doherty, who is pictured here high as kite with former girlfriend Kate Moss on his arm:

Look at him- the glazed eyes, the jaunty hat, the electrical-taped pants and the shrunken maternity shirt clinging to his bony frame. This man is a complete junky god rock jock with a gloriously-dazed Kate Moss clutching him in order to stay upright. Say what you will about his being a pathetic pile-of-shit scagfreak ne'er-do-well, a flaming re-entry is the price one pays for those kind of heights. Now, I do not want to suggest that rock is about the grinning drugged-jackal walking corpses that it creates, it is merely one of the many ingredients that are required to make Rock God Pie. On top of being a waster of the greatest magnitude, Pete is also an amazing rock songwriter and vocalist, with a fantastic range of imagery and allusion to build his songs from. Or he was, until he started in a death spiral- that's neither here nor there. The operative point is that he is, undeniably, rock-and-roll. Now, the lead singer of the Kings of Leon looks like this:

See a supermodel hanging on his arm?

Yes, he is not Pete Doherty. Nor are the Kings of Leon The Libertines. What they are, though, is a band of brothers and a cousin, in a southern band that, though it takes too many queues from the rock of New York and Los Angeles, is still unmistakably a good-ol-boy southern rock band, and conveniently free of the latent racism that keep hits from groups like Lynnard Skynnard off the set list at NAACP mixers. On a couple of songs, like "Joe's Head" and "Trani", insistent guitars, cigarette-scarred vocals and honky-tonk pianos conspire to deliver the goods- a younger, rawer, more diversely-influenced sound in the spirit of C.C.R. Developing such a style is an admirable goal, and the best of this CD shows it to be an attainable one, as well. However, this album falls under a proto-genre of the more expansive 'American Rock' category- the Play Our Singles Please Album, or POSPA. You see, when a southern honky-tonk rock band puts out a song like "California Waiting", with only the lead singers rabies-infected yaps to keep one from concluding that some shithead teenaged pseudo-rocker dating some shithead teenaged actress/singer whose career developed rapidly from child star to stumbling nincompoop recorded the song. In fact, the heavy hand of the hitmaker LA producer can be help on the entire second half of the disc, with the moment of peak crappiness being their widely-played single "Molly's Chambers". The crappiness of this song is probably well-documented, but I must add that the song is flat and lifeless enough to dissuade me from trying to determine just what, in fact, Mr. Caleb Followill (that's this duder's name) wants to do to Molly and her Chambers- it is the plural, chambers, after all...

A second listening helps this disc out a lot, as the points of continuity become more evident. I guess I am just not convinced that this is the album they would make without the input of whatever LA pop culture consultant was flown in for the task. The wussification of rock has become the overwhelming trend not seven years into its revitalization, and I am afraid we must resign ourselves to this fact. However, the Kings of Leon would seem poised to use their newfound popularity to do what they want- let's hope they do.

BTW- Is the guy behind Mr. Followill (pretty good rock name) wearing a plus-size model's blouse?

Posted by Mordred at February 10, 2006 12:47 AM
Listed under Music .