Categories : Music Reviews, Rock + Pop.
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Rating: 3 / 5 Reviewer: David Coats |
Only By The Night is the follow-up to 2007’s well-received Because of the Times, which especially seemed to appeal to those critics who wanted an indie band to make a real rock record. Fans will see Only By The Night as soulful and powerful; detractors will see it as shallow and clichéd. Neither view is totally right, but neither is totally wrong.
Thematically speaking, Only by the Night is fairly one-dimensional – relationships, sex, and loneliness. Musically, Kings Of Leon are at their best writing songs that have a palpable sense of solitude (best listened to on your own in dark surroundings), and sound average when they write arena rock. Opener ‘Closer,’ with its haunting guitar riff, thunderous drums, and the desperate wail of Caleb Followill, is an immediate statement. The self-explanatory ‘Sex On Fire’ is the band’s most commanding sheer rock performance, featuring a soaring vocal (which, along with the bass, carries the bulk of these songs), but the song’s intensity seems unfocused, conceptually playing too much to the rock stereotype. About half the songs are by-the-numbers arena rock, while obligatory ballad ‘Cold Desert’ is one of the band’s finer songs to date, packing an emotional punch without resorting to clichéd intensity. However, for every good lyrical idea (“I’m too young to feel this oldâ€), there’s one to even it out (“Jesus don’t love meâ€). The band’s best songs are the ones that contain enough musical and vocal atmosphere to compensate for what beneath the surface are too often underwhelming concepts.
All of which leaves it open for debate whether Kings Of Leon are really an artistically exciting band, or whether they are, as one respondent suggested, “Nickelback for indie kids.†Only By The Night is a pretty definitive illustration of the strengths and weaknesses of Kings of Leon – it makes for a good, not great, record, by a good, not great, band.
