Kings of Leon's schtick is that they have no schtick: They're just four stand-up guys who happen to be in a rock band. They're from a small town in eastern Tennessee; three of them are brothers and the fourth is a cousin; the brothers are minister's kids; all four were home-schooled. All of which marks them as outsiders-- people untouched by industry politics or expectations who are just playing rock'n'roll 'cause they're livin' it, man! But Kings of Leon's insistence on their own honest naturalism-- from their time-capsule haircuts to Caleb Followill's overexpressive vocals to their terrible album titles-- seems disingenuous, especially in a genre (Southern rock) that prizes realness and grumbles at pretensions. The Followill clan wouldn't last a week in The Drive-By Truckers' Dirty South.
Aha Shake Heartbreak, the follow-up to last year's bewilderingly well-received Youth and Young Manhood, is an update on the previous album's Southern bar-band rock, with just enough Nuggets-style pop chops to impress hipsters and critics. If the hooks aren't as good this time, the songs are more sculpted and succinct, with a greater sense of urgency and economy. On the other hand, these dozen tracks don't really mean anything. Sure, they're about stuff like women and being in a band, but they sound deeply impersonal, and often obligatory in their lazy misogyny ("Cunts watch their bodies, no room for make up") and lazier obtuseness ("He's so the purity, the shaven and the mourning"-- even Beck is more coherent). Caleb sings about a girl with an "hourglass body" who "has problems with drinking milk and being school tardy/ She'll loan you her toothbrush/ She'll bartend your party," but it doesn't sound like he actually knows anyone like that. Instead, the song's about a rock'n'roll archetype-- the wild heartbreaker, the man-eater, the endearing groupie-- and it never manages to transcend the blandly conceptual.
Elsewhere, the lyrics are so self-referential they're almost narcissistic. Songs like "Slow Night, So Long" and "Four Kicks" are about what hard-livin' good ol' boys the Followills are. In particular, "Soft" is stupid sex wordplay that would be insulting if it weren't so self-deprecating: "I'm passed out in your garden...I'd pop myself in your body/ I'd come into your party but I'm soft." One word: eww. Another favorite topic is the harsh realities of endless touring and low-level fame, as if having a major-label promote you and Dave Eggers worship you in print are such hardships. But on "Day Old Blues" Caleb observes that "Girls are gonna love the way I toss my hair/ Boy are going to hate the way I seem." This boy in particular thinks that's the key to what makes this band such a bunch of fakes: They're more interested in appearances than in their music. Those haircuts don't appear anywhere in nature.
On the other hand, maybe it's just the way Caleb sings that and every other line on Aha Shake Heartbreak. He is a terrible singer, like a drunken Randy Newman with Tourette's-- which would be a compliment if it didn't make you expect more intelligent lyrics. On just about every song here he lets loose a flurry of words in some bizarre approximation of backwater sass, but it just sounds willful and grating. On "Day Old Blues", he turns some lyrics into almost scat-like utterances while painfully overenunciating others. He's shooting for some sort of Southern-slash-Appalachian accent, but ultimately he defies geography and just sounds unnatural.
The album's one redeeming element is the band itself, who-- over the course of one EP and two albums-- have improved tenfold. They're tighter, more dynamic, and much more confident on Aha Shake Heartbreak than they were on Youth and Young Manhood. Granted, they still sound like they're descended from The Strokes and other garage bands rather than from southern royalty like Lynyrd Skynyrd or even Southern pop like The Gants or The Scruffs. Their boogie may have crawled out of Williamsburg instead of some backwater swamp, but Nathan, Jared, and Matthew Followill manage to incorporate vintage elements into their music without sounding overly nostalgic (which is the pitfall of soundalikes Thee Shams). "Slow Night, So Long" finds a twist ending in a slow coda, and songs like "The Bucket" and "Razz" pop and bounce elastically. With its hand-claps and staccato guitars, "Taper Jean Girl" struts such undeniable bad-ass energy that you may find yourself singing along, although you'll want to make up your own words.
