Kings of Leon: Where did the mojo go?

The Kings of Leon before their music industry makeover.

On their debut album Youth and Young Manhood, Kings of Leon frontman Caleb Followill screeched the following warning to mothers in the chorus of "Happy Alone":

I'm gonna tangle my face hair. It's gonna tickle your daughter.

3 o'clock in the morning, they all cry to me.

I'll be prancin' around in my high heels and your cherry red lipstick.

Look out your window. I'm on your street.

Followill is part of a four-man clan of Tennessee rednecks (three brothers and a younger cousin) who had spent their youth backing up their revival-tent-preaching father, Leon, and had given up the holy roller life for the sex and danger of conventional rock and roll. In the band's infancy, they sounded every bit like the Appalachian Stooges. They were raw and powerful. They were genuine American minstrel rebel weirdoes. 

Despite the slick two-guitar attack of the Kings' garage rock -- much credit clearly owed again to producer Ethan James who I recently praised for his work with Ray LaMontagne -- Falowill's howling sexual boasts were right out of the playbook of country and blues singers from the dawn of American music, but with the added twist of contemporary strange (prancin' round in my high heels). The Kings of Leon were not right. They might even be dangerous. You might look out your window one night and there would be Caleb Followill... on your street. Coming for your daughter. A modern day Hoochie Coochie Man.



You see, the real currency of contemporary rock and roll is this: it must scare the establishment. If it doesn't make the generation before it uncomfortable, why bother? Rock has always had this edge: from Elvis's hips and the Beatles' long hair, rock borrowed the fear factor from the earlier generation of blues greats -- listen to Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters and back to Skip James and Lightning Hopkins. The music was always about danger. At it's best it still is. It's tough in this day and age to do anything that would shake the mores of America, but you gotta try to be serious rock and roll these days. The Kings were Rock and Roll.

Kings of Leon's weird and dangerous rock ways peaked with 2007's Because of the Times. The boys had come a long away from their Tennessee days -- they were immediately huge in the U.K. that embraced the band and it's odd backstory -- but the band managed to pull off an awesome record of sonic daring that might not have been as back-woods weird, but was still rock. They had been on the scene for 6 years and 3 records, but were oblivious about expectations, market or otherwise. They were so confident, they opened the record with a 7-minute number called "Knocked Up." They followed with lots of sound and structure experiments including  "Charmer" and "McFearless." The band was loud, obnoxious and unapologetic. The rock possibilities seemed endless. They were poised to be most important guitar rock band in the U.S.

But the band's follow-up Only by Night saw them part ways with Johns for a team of big producers who began to transform them into a real arena phenomenon.  Behind the interstellar hits "Sex on Fire" and "Use Somebody," The Kings were suddenly the biggest rock band in the world. They were in U2 and Oasis territory. The record sold 6.2 million copies and broke every iTunes download record. It was a surprise smash.

The success came at the expense of the band's mojo. The record was not bad. It just wasn't good. Definitely not a step forward from Because of the Times They no longer sounded nearly so dangerous as slick. The Tennessean's who sang "The Lord's gonna get us back" on Youth's "Holy Roller Novocaine" were performing arena-sized anthems like "Manhattan." In one interview, Caleb Followill curiously called "Sex on Fire" "a piece of shit." It sounded like the band had consciously cashed in, regretted the move and was prepared to right the ship and get back to making rock that mattered.

But sadly, nothing could be further from the truth. Several weeks ago when the Kings released the video for their new single "Radioactive" from the new record Come Around Sundown w any hopes I had of a return to form were promptly killed. 

Inexplicably, poised for an artistic breakthrough -- they had the attention of a 6.2-million-record-buying audience -- the band decided to double down on the larger-than-life, reverb-drenched arena schlock of Only by Night that they had just hastily badmouthed.* Instead of a record that sent the squares running for cover, Come Around Sundown is a record that I expect to hear covered by future karaoke queens on next season's American Idol. 

Come Around Sundown is not inherently intolerable. The Kings are a great band and you can hear snippets of good musical ideas. But they're all drowned in pretty record company gloss. Any new fan of the band would be shocked to hear the band's debut material. To the neophyte, it must sound like it was recorded in an entirely different age.

After...

Kings of Leon will probably sell a lot of records anyway, though in many ways, the new record may fail to do even that. There are no immediate sing-along choruses that are as forcefully hooky as "Use Somebody" or even that piece of shit, Sex on Fire." In fact, The Kings may succeed  in not only further alienating fans of the first three records, but failing to further enchant that new legion of arena rock fans and Glee watchers they gained in the last two years.

I suppose there's always a chance they can come back to the street corner. But its a long way down from the mountaintop on which they find themselves now. It is perhaps a move that would only be possible if Come Around Sundown is a commercial failure. But I don't think those odds are substantial. America now has it's Coldplay. And it's a crying shame.

* A footnote: This is always the critical juncture for bands. So many fail, but the best always manage to challenge their new, large audiences with great artistic statements. One great example that comes immediately to mind is Nirvana, which followed the commercial smash of Nevermind with its absolute best record, In Utero, a punishing, uncompromising rock statement that is by far the best record to come out of the whole early '90s Seattle "grunge" movement. And talk about scaring the establishment: Try on "Rape Me" and the brutal assault of "Milk It." Even the record's big single "All Apologies" is pretty much about about being killed by marriage...