Kings of Leon – Only by the night

Southern fried Leon.

“Screech, Screech…” sings lead singer Caleb Followill, as the soft rock guitar chugs behind him.

This album is not only whiny and high pitched, it’s also whiny and high pitched. Is there anything you need to know about the album? Has this description not already caused you to throw up your arms in disgust and vow never to buy this album?

Well, other than that, it’s pretty solid as an album, the quite mild tempered nature of the music causes me to be quite forgiving of the self-obsessed and pompous singer. Like a big floppy dog, that’s just done a poo in the middle of your floor, but looks really sorry about it, the music seems to apologise for the over the top nature of the lyrics. It’s like when your friend is far too drunk and is making a fool of himself in public, and you spend your whole time apologising to everyone and trying to usher your friend into the nearest taxi and tell the driver to dump him on his doorstep.

I really want the singer to have a soft raspy voice, telling me about the harsh times he’s faced and how he struggled through adversity. Instead I have some stupid-faced kid screaming at me that my sex is on fire. That’s not what I want from any album.

Throughout the album, it doesn’t get any better and I continue to be slapped with a barrage of trivial nonsense that sounds less preferable to nails on a blackboard. At least with nails on a blackboard, I can punch the person who’s doing it.

The short periods that are enjoyable are quickly doused with another helping from the Screechasaurus. Crawl is one of the only songs which shows what this album should have been like, with the deep sound, the meandering rhythm and the singing that isn’t very annoying.

Listen to this album: With your head in a bucket of ice water.

Rating: 43%

Extracts from ‘Crawl’, ‘Manhattan’, ‘Notion’ and ‘I want you’

Sex on Fire

Foxboro Hot Tubs – Stop Drop and Roll!!!

Swinging rock.

Green Day, under another name, attempt to play 60s American garage rock music, and in points succeed with their mission and at other points they fail. At points they sound like Green Day, at other points you can’t tell it’s them at all. At points it’s good, at points it’s rubs.

The thing is, I don’t know if I want them to sound like Green Day doing this style of music, or if I want them to sound completely different. It’s just a bit confusing.

The best songs, I think, are the ones where they succeed to put an image of 60s America in my brain, and I just see them all stood about in black and white.
The songs which succeed in this are songs like ‘Ruby Room’ and  She’s a Saint not a Celebrity’.

Overall, I think they have a winning album with this, and it’s an interesting concept. They even split the album into 2 sides to keep in with their 60s ideology which is an interesting touch, but seems a bit pointless when listening to the album on CD or on your mp3 player. Maybe putting it on 2 CDs would give it the authentic vinyl feel as you have to make that extra effort to change CDs.

It’s exciting, it’s interesting and it makes me want to boogie.

Listen to this album: In 60’s black and white with your mum’s old clothes on.

Rating 81%

Extracts from ‘Ruby Room’, ‘Red Tide’ and ‘27th Ave Shuffle’

‘Mother Mary’