If you had to single out a band as the embodiment of everything supposedly small-stakes and emotionally bankrupt about indie rock culture, who would it be? I imagine you wouldn't pick the almost painfully sincere and Billboard-topping Arcade Fire, but you're not Caleb Followill. Despite Only By the Night's elevating Kings of Leon from self-imagined superstars to actual superstars, Followill has spent the leadup to the release of Come Around Sundown in attack mode, throwing ill subliminals at Richard Reed Parry (the dude with the helmet), preemptively turning down Glee, and calling their breakout hit "Sex on Fire" a "piece of shit," the message being "look at these effin' hipsters, we're the real deal." Aw-shucks posturing aside, KoL have always been savvy about how they position themselves, and this is a classic political move: galvanizing a majority with a sense of victimhood.
But after hearing Come Around Sundown, here's the thing about this "us vs. them" tactic: I don't believe it, in large part because I don't think Kings of Leon do either. Come Around Sundown indeed feels like an awfully political work of art, though it's not necessary falling into the philosophy of red state/blue state. Rather, Kings of Leon themselves come off like jaded and wearied political lifers who've finally realized what it takes to win the game they're playing: That compromise is an end, that saying nothing at all is often saying the right thing.
Those sort of mixed messages permeate Come Around Sundown. The rise of Kings of Leon has coincided directly with their ability to be compared to U2, and just as you suspect they follow fame with a loose, modest comedown album pumped up to stadium status grandeur against its own will. At its core, first single "Radioactive" is a pleasingly aerodynamic piece of radio rock, a two-note bass riff giving an alley-oop to the most emphatic, hollering hook on Sundown. So why the gospel choir on the chorus? Well, that's just what the biggest of the big do, and the staggeringly exploitative video uncomfortably suggests the idea of it as soul-by-osmosis. Duly acknowledging the midnight tokers, "Mary" is full of headslap, "Sweet Leaf"-deep metaphors. Meanwhile, "Birthday" is a barstool rabble-rouser on first glance, but it's little more than an exhibit for what's become the stock characterization of women on Kings of Leon songs, namely, the kind of mythical, hell-raising maneater who still manages to make her submissive victim sound misognystic. Fact is, even if Kings of Leon sound almost nothing like the guys who made Youth & Young Manhood, they still have no trouble recognizing the archetypes that trigger an immense sense of self-satisfaction from people who insist rock achieved perfection in 1974.
At the very least, the powerfully encoded titles of "Pickup Truck", "Beach Side", "Back Down South", and "Mi Amigo" aren't a real indication of what they deliver-- though there's the occasional pedal steel and fiddle sigh, Kings of Leon stop shy of the "we're a country band now" pandering that prolonged the careers of Bon Jovi, Kid Rock, Jewel, and Darius Rucker. But even if they did overemphasize their Tennessee twang, these songs in particular call out Come Around Sundown for lacking the lowest common denominator of all pop: hooks. Even if this still packs amphitheatres, what are the crowds suppose to sing along to? At this point, you should no doubt be used to Followill's bizarre accent, which sounds wholly averse to enunciation, but tonally, he remains one of the most grating singers in rock. Regardless of what incarnation of KoL you're talking about, the vocals should have depth, warmth, or swagger, but Followill lacks grit, instead gilded with a squeaky, mewling edge that is unwisely amplified by featuring him punishingly high in the mix at all times.
A shame, really since KoL do have their charms-- the rhythm section is often agile, inventive, and propulsive when the tempo allows it, and like the similarly positioned Coldplay, there are hints of a wellspring of eccentricity that they haven't been able to fully tap into. But as in political debate, nuance is rarely acknowledged and incremental progress is often mistaken for none at all when it comes to bands at this level. You're either in or you're out, and for some reason people tend to think that being against Kings of Leon is akin to being against drinking whiskey or getting laid. That's not necessarily Kings of Leon's fault, but Come Around Sundown is, and it ends up being no different from a lot of the phony populism in the air these days.
