Kings of Leon: A Sneaky Little Pete
Dec 14, 2007
Words by Allison Felus
Illustration by Zack Sultan
I have a lot of fondness for albums that come on as growers, but I think the term has become debased a bit recently, devalued, as it's been seized upon by blog culture as a way to flatter ourselves and our listening habits (knowingly: "ooh, yeah, give it a while--it's a total grower") instead of reflecting the appropriate amount of glory back on to the music at hand. As something of a self-administered corrective, a sideward glancing way of looking at the same thing, I've found it useful to start thinking in terms of sneakers--music that almost shocks you when you wake up to the realization, "Wait, I _like_ this?" It doesn't even have to be some kind of guilty pleasure; it took me at least four albums to recognize I could probably, officially, finally call myself an Elvis Costello fan.
There are pockets of the internet where you'll certainly be able to find folks ready and willing to assure you that Kings of Leon's _Because of the Times_ is a grower. But fuck naw -- this bad boy's a sneaker. Because who would have ever expected it to be this good? I mean, when that chugging drum pattern and lonesome highway guitar fades in at the beginning of "Knocked Up," I defy anyone -- especially anyone who attended a Midwestern university -- to deny we're dangerously close to Dave Matthews territory here. Then you get some sort of audaciously yelpy attempt at a Black Francis impression in "Charmer," and by the time you've made it to the dance punk affectations of "My Party," you'll be ready to write the rest of the whole mess off, before even hearing it, as a hodgepodge of empty genre gestures and trendy influence aping, dragging on to a bloated 51 minutes and taking up precious space on your external hard drive. Pfbt. Who needs it?
And yet there's something sneakily ingratiating in _Because of the Times_. The album charms you in spite of yourself, planting little rhythmic filigrees and bright flashes of melody in the back of your mind so that, before you consciously realize it, you've come to crave these songs. Suddenly, those 51 minutes are gone in a flash and you're itching to spin back to the first track for another go round again. Such is the peculiar genius of Kings of Leon on this album. Not content with their Southern-fried pigeonhole, they've expanded into the already mentioned sonic signifiers they almost have no business dabbling in, not to mention the fact that they've also committed themselves to revisiting some of the barfier corners of U2 and Sting's back catalogs (on, say, "True Love Way" and "Arizona" respectively), and goddamn if they don't make it work for them.
Surprisingly, for an album so long, which has the potential to dissolve into tedium, the trick is to wait until the backend slide into its second half. Of course you'll likely come to adore side one eventually as well, when what previously appeared as annoyances melt away to reveal a whole host of peculiar and generous little gifts: that quiet whistle at 5:20 in "Knocked Up," the pummeling bass -- in full-on Kim Deal homage mode -- in "Charmer," the sharp cut in the reverb decay on the lead vocal in the verse of "On Call," that gloriously nervous and skittering drum pattern in "McFearless," the howling, stoned-in-the-scorching-summer-sun chorus of "Black Thumbnail," and the almost ridiculously improbable strut of "My Party." But somehow these delights only become apparent after a thorough soaking in the goodwill of their attempt, in the last seven songs, to make music that sounds like it was meant to be released, technology be damned, on audio cassette tape.
The opening chords of the Bono-riffic "True Love Way" seem to indicate a shift in the band at this point in the album away from trying to sound cool and toward a dorkier but happier geeking out to the cozy, familiar sounds of the anthemic popular rock songs of the mid- to late-80s. Though the sound is no less meaty and accomplished here, it's almost festooned with a shrug, as if the Kings are finally ready to admit it's useless to try to hide from how good these chord voicings and arrangements feel, no matter how apparently cheesy. Your ability to get anything out of _Because of the Times_ at all is going to be due, in large part, to your ability to succumb to these pleasures as well. Come on -- just listen to that buoyant bass and descending glockenspiel line near the end of "Ragoo" and tell me Gordon Sumner couldn't, I dunno, reupholster a sofa in his Italian palazzo with that!
And, sure, it'd be easy to bust on the narcissistic sour grapes of "Fans" -- sorry you're more popular in Europe than you are in the States, guys -- but it's impossible to resist such an exquisite, grin-inducing slice of stadium-ready bombast for the sake of a complaint as petulant as "shit lyrics." Who listens to a band like this for their words anyway?
From there, "The Runner" is the kind of effortlessly elegant waltz Colin Meloy has been trying his whole career to write (and I say this as a fairly huge Decemberists fan), and the slinky tension of "Trunk" aches with just the right amount of longing for an embrace you know you should forget but can't bear to yet. Even "Camaro," a straightforwardly simplistic rock song about a girl and a car and a pair of sunglasses, manages to sound fresh, thanks to its kicky conviction that there just aren't enough straightforwardly simplistic rock songs about girls and cars and sunglasses being written anymore. "Arizona" is a perfect album closer, a melancholy send-off with a vibrantly pulsing heartbeat, a sweetly keening lead guitar line, and an expansive, horizon-wide sunset of a bass line.
Presumably, a grower will eventually stop growing and, like the growth of a tree or a child, you'll likely only realize the transformation after the fact. But the sneaker has the benefit of flash-freezing that first shock of recognition as if in amber. Yes, you'll know the names and personalities of all the songs, like little ducks in a row, before long, but the gotcha moment when you knew you'd fallen in love can be returned to again and again, marveled at, repeated and chuckled over with amazed affection, nourishing your enjoyment of the album like a particularly epic creation myth. Turn your back. _Because of the Times_ is coming.
"Kings of Leon":http://www.kingsofleon.com
