What's the deal with the Kings of Leon?

-> I didn't know they had internet in the 70s.

zt

As it stands, they're trying to get it done with half-assed riffs and horrendous vocals. Of course the English love 'em!

You're welcome.

Aha Shake Heartbreak (RCA) serves up less Dixie and more NYC than the Kings' more boogie-ish and also shitty debut full-length Youth & Young Manhood.

No, they didn't read Ulysses. They listened to the entire catalog of Sixteen Horsepower and still couldn't figure out what David Eugene Edwards is all about but thought it might be cool to imitate him anyway.

You mean besides in Manhattan?

Is there such a thing as an audience for altie (or limply recorded) southern rock that can fill more than one club in LA or New York on a Saturday night?

Molly Hatchet is probably still a bigger draw and that band is all ringers. Government Mule surely is. So are the Allmans. .38 Special grosses more on the festival circuit. Kings of Leon have no audience without a breakthrough single or video.

Their label should be buying them onto a high profile country star tours for the next couple years. Depends on how much money they think they can affort to lose against potential future sales.

They don't boogie. They sound twitchy, my idea of a rock band made up of skinny rednecks who GED'd high school and dabbled in making bathtub speed. I don't hear any hooks or riffs or good voices and if they were actually interested in being a hard rock band, or simply sounding vigorous, they would have made an album that came out of the speakers a lot fuller and more jacked up, not something thin and anemically squawking by that Johns guy.

And now that everyone in print is done telling the story of how they were born to religion and they are handsome brothers, what's left?
The album cover looks vaguely like something Queen published once?

As someone who loves reggae and the Strokes, let me just say: ICK

>Chart Attack, Canada - Mar 4, 2005
>... Praise the Good Lord that Tennessee natives, The Features, and >>those wanderin' southern boys of rock, Kings Of Leon, stuck around >>to heat up the Opera House. ...

They don't sound like southern rock. Period.

>Allston-Brighton TAB, MA - Mar 4, 2005
>... With a rebel yell, the Kings of Leon strode into the Paradise in >Allston Sunday and showed us that Southern rock is back.

Molly Hatchet is southern rock. Do Kings of Leon sound like that, or like something that would be beaten up by it?
>Indiana Observer

"Many American rock fans have at least heard of Kings of Leon, but the band's popularity in the States is miniscule compared to the success the band has experienced in Great Britain, where its first album, "Youth and Young Manhood," has almost reached double platinum. While Kings of Leon experienced a great deal of critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic, something about these homegrown rural American boys did not pick up in their homeland.

"Three of the members of the band, singer-guitarist Caleb Followill, bass guitarist Jared Followill and drummer Nathan Followill are brothers. [No shit, Sherlock.] Southern gargage-rockers Kings Of Leon normally might have passed >>on opening for U2 on their North American tour, which begins March >>28 in San Diego

>>Washington Post - Feb 27, 2005
... spent traveling the path to salvation with their evangelist father, the three Followill brothers (plus a cousin) in the rock band Kings of Leon hit their late ...

Mercy!

>Chicago Sun-Times - Feb 27, 2005
>BY BRIAN GARRITY. NEW YORK -- For Kings of Leon, fame is a relative >thing. ... "Fame is where you are," sais Kings of Leon drummer >Nathan Followill.

Philosophers!

>Boston Globe - Feb 28, 2005
>This question is making the rounds of the music industry: ''Do you >think Kings of Leon are really worthy of being the opening act on >the coming U2 tour?".

It's not a matter of are they worthy? It's a matter of how much money was spent buying them onto the tour.

>Washington Times, DC - Feb 27, 2005
>>... inveterate Nashville songwriter. While its origins are less >>than organic, Kings of Leon is growing into the bubba-rock part.

>Rolling Stone - Feb 22, 2005
>Kings of Leon -- singer-guitarist Caleb, drummer Nathan and bass >guitarist Jared Followill, all brothers, and their cousin, lead >guitarist Matthew Followill [Another Sherlock in the house.]

>Baltimore Sun - Feb 24, 2005
>The three brothers who make up Kings of Leon were raised in the >South by an itinerant Pentecostal minister, and when they would >water-ski, they would do so in sweat pants and shirts...
>These Southern rockers are looking good ...

Brothers! Churchmen! Overcome rigid upbringing! They look good! And they're modest with the flesh, too! Butter wouldn't melt in their mouths! You could take them in for dinner and they wouldn't piss on the toilet seat.

>>aily Free Press (subscription), MA - Feb 24, 2005
>>... The four members of the Kings of Leon (the three brothers and >>their cousin) seem to be writing for a life they never lived, and >>the pretense is palpable

Not bad!

>Pioneer Press, MN - 14 hours ago
>The Kings of Leon are probably the best thing to come out of >Tennessee since Peyton Manning, and, like the quarterback, they have >>shown encouraging growth

Leave it so someone from Minnesota to judge what's good from Tennessee.

>>The big losers this week were Southern garage rockers Kings of >>Leon, whose much-hyped and critically well-received sophomore >>album, Aha Shake Heartbreak, sold a mere 20,000 copies to debut at >>Number Fifty-Five. Rolling Stone chart report.

>Chicago Sun-Times - Feb 20, 2005
>Like their father and uncle, the fundamentalist Southern preacher >Leon Followill, the Tennessee natives in Kings of Leon know how to >make their flock rise up ...

>Charlotte Observer (subscription), NC - Feb 21, 2005
>Kings of Leon, from Tennessee, is the kind of Southern-rock band >hipsters outside of the South love to love.

Yeah, not like Molly Hatchet.

>USA Today
>. The Followills — brothers Caleb, Nathan and Jared and their cousin >Matthew — haven't just created a bluesy brew of scarring metal >guitars, bruising beats and punk wrath. They pervert their Southern >Gothic vibe by blending rural authenticity and creative abandon. >Tender ears may register other perversions in these tales of raunch >and sleaze, some of which might be hauled before a decency committee >if Caleb's slurry drawl weren't so incoherent. Like homemade hooch, >Aha Shake rattles and roils with a sweet and nasty kick too often >obliterated in pasteurized rock. —Edna Gundersen

Daily newspaper music journalist who hates hard rock finding a band thought to be hard rock and writing about it as if it so.

>Washington Times, DC - Feb 23, 2005
>... Tennessee-born rockers Kings of Leon have seemingly picked up >right where Lynyrd Skynyrd left off and have added their own little >alt-rock edge

Deluded. Listen to your Skynyrd albums again. What? You don't have any Skynyrd albums? Thought so.

>Mansfield News Journal, OH - Feb 17, 2005
>... COLUMBUS -- Kings of Leon, a modern rock quartet heavily >influenced by Southern rock

>Lynyrd Skynyrd Heads Southern Rock Salute
>CHELSEA J. CARTER
>Associated Press published in the Miami Herald

>Call it a jam session, Grammy style: An all-star medley where old >school meets the next generation. But true to the Grammys, the >musical pairings were a little ... off.
>In this case, it was a salute to Southern Rock that saw Lynyrd >Skynyrd and Dickie Betts of the Allman Brothers Band paired with >today's hottest country singers, from Tim McGraw to Gretchen Wilson.
>Yes, we all know Southern rock is influenced by country music and >visa versa. But if you're saluting Southern rock, shouldn't it >include the genre's newcomers? There are dozens to choose from - try >Kings of Leon, Drive-By Truckers or Shinedown - who have been >influenced by the legendary rockers that took the stage.

Eh, no, Chelsea, because the Kings of Leon don't sound remotely like the Allmans or Lynyrd Skynyrd or the Marshall Tucker Band or Charlie Daniels or ...

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (subscription), AR - 8 hours ago
... I think the Kings of Leon are hippies. ...

Kings of Leon want to rule America
Born in the South, raised Pentecostal, the Kings wait for Americans to embrace their fire-and-brimstone rock 'n' roll.

By Christopher Muther

The Roanoke Times

New York Times News Service

Jared Followill has grown tired of telling the story. He's told it to more than a few reporters over the past two years. But he knows, even at the tender age of 18, that the yarn has helped his band, Kings of Leon, charm the pants off Europe, so he politely begins again.

In the event you're one of the few who hasn't heard the story, it goes something like this: The Followill brothers, Nathan, Caleb and Jared, grew up crisscrossing the Bible Belt with their Pentecostal preacher father, Leon, and their church pianist mother, Betty Ann, spreading the good word.

=================
Wandering churchmen forbidden to listen and dance to rock music, like at Bob Jones University or something
============================================

The brothers slept in cars and in relatives' homes in a childhood during which rock music was forbidden. Instead, their nomadic existence consisted of fire-and-brimstone scripture and gospel music. Until their father was defrocked as a result of his alcoholism. The brothers then crash-landed back into the world of MTV and Fox reality television.

"When you grow up listening to rock music all the time, I don't think you can really grasp how amazing some of these songs are," said Jared Followill, bass player and the youngest of the brothers. "But when you hear them for the first time when you're 16, or 18, or 19, it's going to do something to you, and that's what happened to us."

...Brits eagerly ate up the musicians' Southern-Gothic fairy tale and snatched up copies of the debut album, "Youth & Young Manhood."

Looking like they just fell out of a time machine from 1973 only helped their celebrity. However, their platinum status in England NEVER translated to sales in the United States.

"I think our story was romanticized in Europe." Jared Followill explained.

============================
Americans are thick and lacking in taste, not as cultured as Europeans, who know of fine things.
=================================================================

"Our first record is a great record when you think about everything that comes along with it: how we look, where we came from, all the stuff with our father. In England, they put it all into perspective.

"But in America, it was different. The South is kind of looked down upon, and people didn't really know anything about us here, they just heard this raw music. America tends to be into big productions and hip-hop, and our music is pretty much the opposite of that."

==========================================
Demand their destiny wbe ritten in history book
==========================================

"We want people to hear what we're doing, and we want our page in history," Jared Followill said. "But if we became famous just because we were the band that opened for U2, that wouldn't be cool."

Followill has another concern about opening for U2 in the United States.

============================
Heckle not the Kings of Leon, for disrespect of them would not be cool
=============================================
"Hopefully there won't be a bunch of guys from my high school there booing us," he said. "That also wouldn't be cool."

"Like homemade hooch, >Aha Shake rattles and roils with a sweet and nasty kick too often >obliterated in pasteurized rock."

That Edna, she's a good ol gal. Try this: your review had the same effect as moonshine. i.e. I broke out in sweats & felt like puking.

Kings of Leon concert review in today's Kansas City Star:

If the music the Kings of Leon play is the forbidden fruit of their youth, maybe a little deprivation is a very good thing. Or maybe the roaring fire they ignite when they perform live is all relative — as in familial.

Sunday night this band of three brothers and their first cousin came to Kansas City for the first time. Though they only half-filled the cavernous Beaumont Club, the size of the crowd was impressive, considering the Kings get much less attention in radio land than they do in the print media. Apparently some people still read magazines and newspapers.

The Kings are touring on just their second album, “Aha Shake Heartbreak,” which partly explains the brevity of their show: They have only 23 recorded songs in their catalog, and most of those come and go in an average of three minutes.

Sunday's show lasted about 65 minutes, but it was cut short by a medical condition related to the Kings' music: Lead singer Caleb Followill likes to scream over his band's thick, heavy and loud rock songs. His voice was riding on worn treads from the start; about five songs into the show, during a primal shriek in “Pistol of Fire,” he blew it out.

That didn't stop him from screaming and wailing — often indecipherably — through the rest of the show, but it did prompt him to shorten the show by one song. It also altered his delivery.

“Now he sounds like Dan McCafferty of Nazareth,” a friend said about 10 songs in.

If that was supposed to be an insult, I didn't take it as one. True, Followill did sound a bit Spinal Tap, but that oddly embellished the Kings' sound, which is a confounding swirl of influences: mid-'60s rock, classic '70s heavy rock, grungy electric blues, post-punk and a few other sounds that their Pentecostal preacher dad (he's Leon) forbid them to hear when they were growing up.

The moral of that story: Judge not lest ye be defrocked and your offspring figure out their own truths. And the truth about the Kings is they are a lean, loud and entertaining heavy-rock band.

Because they grew up in the South, the Kings have been victims of some reckless comparisons (like to Lynyrd Skynyrd and Molly Hatchet). Not even close. They do, however, bear an occasional resemblance to a guy from Gainesville, Fla.: Tom Petty, when he was writing fast and hard rock songs like “I Need to Know.”

>“Now he sounds like Dan McCafferty of Nazareth,” a friend said about 10 songs in.

If that was supposed to be an insult, I didn't take it as one. True, Followill did sound a bit Spinal Tap,<

Good joke, Anthony.

what a fucking moron [is that fellow]

Indeed. Not only is it off but insulting a hard rock band by calling the singer "like Dan McCafferty" is the 180-RollingStone redbook rule in action, a dead giveaway the person despises hard rock.

where is the love for louisiana's LEROUX?

bah i says.
bah says i.
m.

"goojob daddie1111 youdoogoojob!!"
m.

by Hans Eisenbis

Why has the South never produced any decent punk rock? You’d expect confrontational punk statements to flourish in a region that has steeped itself for more than a century in the mythology of defeat, that seethes with backwoods narratives of sin and redemption, that has given us every kind of twisted and tortured literary creation from Faulkner’s Snopes family to Flannery O’Connor’s gallery of grotesques. Yes, there has been an embarrassment of “southern rock.” But that is a saccharine blend of electrified country and stadium-rock bombast. Its highest expression, “Free Bird,” is all about delusions of rebel grandeur. Southern rock is a sort of musical bully that looks good only when it lobs threats at weaklings and Canadians, like Neil Young. Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Allman Brothers, .38 Special—the South’s Almost Famous moment came and went about 30 years ago, and it was artless.

Yet Kings of Leon manages to make it sound as though that whole dreary rampage of rebel posing never happened. The band’s new release, Aha Shake Heartbreak, delivers a punk-rock mission statement in its first decipherable lyrics: “Rise and shine, all you gold-diggin’ muthas,” drawls Kings front man Caleb Followill. “Are you too good to tango with the poor, poor boys?” The music echoes the slogan’s half-disheveled, half-revolutionary mood, with a drunken piano plonk weaving alongside a persistent bongo beat.

Regional politics aside, the Kings’ belligerence is completely understandable. The band—which in suitably high-southern gothic style, consists of three brothers and a first cousin, all named Followill—debuted in 2003, with the energetic Youth & Young Manhood. It was received with underwhelming enthusiasm here in the States. At the time, critics were stimulated by a group of rich, bored, private-school kids called the Strokes, and they saw the Kings as low-rent copycats. This was unjust. The similarities were merely outward. The Kings played a raunchier, more soulful brand of garage rock; the low GPAs and halitosis were badges of honor reminiscent of the Ramones. They were earnest white-trash dropouts, after all, with a dad (named Leon, like his father) who drank bourbon and preached the Word, while practically living in a car. They were New South rejects, and their music sounded that way, and it was dirty good fun. It’s hard to imagine any other band penning, to an admired girl, the inscrutable, timeless-sounding lament, “Hey! You’re giving all your cinnamon away!”

Apart from the exception-proving-the-rule precedent of R.E.M., southern punk has not taken firm root in native soil. In recent years, that’s begun to change. Hank Williams III breaks every rule in Nashville and has a predilection for hard-core metal that he freely indulges in side projects. A Florida punk band called Whole Wheat Bread landed the opening slot on Catch-22’s current national tour. But the most vital southern-punk movement is also the most syncretic one: the Atlanta-based genre known as crunk, which—thanks to pioneers like Lil Jon and Young BloodZ—has revived hip-hop and punk in an unlikely New South setting.



Oddly, the band found an estimable critical following in Britain—usually the world capital of anxious pop trend-mongering. The Brits, finely attuned to the echoes of social class in pop music, took the Kings at face value. Of course, face value in a case like this is also more than a little deceiving: While Aha Shake Heartbreak showcases four feckless stoners speaking in their own shop-class patois, it also captures them playing alarmingly sophisticated pop. Like the best work of another underappreciated punk brothers act, Arizona’s Meat Puppets, Aha is filled with often idiotic or lysergic punch lines delivered at a back-of-the- class mumble.

Still, this would make for pretty thin grits if it weren’t accompanied by intensely rich, chiming rock. Consider “Milk,” a schmaltzy pitch-perfect ballad, in which Caleb sings about what I take to be the Followill family’s feminine ideal: “She saw my comb-over / Her hourglass body / She has problems with drinking milk and being school tardy / She’ll loan you her toothbrush / She’ll bartend your party.” Still, the new release does feature at least one troubling sign of creeping self-consciousness, in the midst of a splendid, jangling rave-up called “The Bucket.” Caleb abruptly starts in on the travails of spreading rock renown: “I’ll be the one to show you the way / You’ll be the one to always complain . . . I don’t feel comfortable talking to you / Unless you got the zipper fixed on my shoe / And I'll be in the lobby drinking for two / Eighteen / Balding / Star!”

In moments like this you find yourself not only worrying about Caleb’s hairline (a recurring theme) but also about whether the Kings’ sense of twisted southern innocence can persist—not because it isn’t genuine, but because the Kings’ image as inspiring Dixie losers seems on a drastic collision course with the grim business of rock stardom. This was, after all, pretty much the dilemma—together with wicked management and a fearsome pill habit—that undid another southern King, across the state in Memphis. We should celebrate these new, uncorrupted Kings while we have still them.

Anyway, the big contrast between southern rock, ala the material the writer detests, and the Kings of Leon is that KoL can't or won't write catchy songs.

I bought the album the next day.