Live at Lido Sounds

Kings Of Leon: A return to their old shoes

Despite a family tragedy, the Kings Of Leon family are as fresh and unspent as they have been for a long time.

(Bild: Krone KREATIV/Universal Music (2))

For more than 20 years, the Kings Of Leon family has been on a steep uphill climb, but on their way to the big stadiums they have lost the edginess of the early days. Their ninth album "Can We Please Have Fun" is a return to the past and a look ahead. Live at Lido Sounds in Linz at the end of June.

When bands take their music into outer space, caution is always the order of the day. As big as the stadium band Coldplay may have become in the meantime, musically Chris Martin and co. had their most exciting phases around two decades ago, when they didn't yet turn their lavish live concerts into a kind of cosmic children's birthday party. U2 mastermind Bono, on the other hand, still floats in earthly spheres in purely physical terms with his Irish rockers, but forcing his own album on all iTunes users was also more reminiscent of an extraterrestrial lack of sensitivity than of samaritanism. Southern soft rockers Kings Of Leon, one of the youngest rock bands with stadium-sized ambitions, created their 2021 coronavirus album "When You See Yourself" as an NFT and launched it into orbit via the "Insipiration4" space flight.

Taking hits to the stadiums
The Followill family (three brothers, one cousin) lost their grip on the ground long before that. As is the case with acts that start out in a cozy setting and become world-famous in a very short space of time, their synapses can sometimes fire. In the case of Kings Of Leon, this mainly happened musically. With the album "Only By The Night" and the accompanying hit singles "Sex On Fire" and "Use Somebody" in 2008, the quartet finally lost their grip on their initial rock'n'roll roots, but instead won the hearts of mainstream fans and catapulted themselves into the highest spheres of their genre. They went from official halls to the biggest arenas, in America to football stadiums, and in this country to big festivals like Nova Rock or Rock In Vienna.

Since then, the release span for new albums has lengthened and the quality has increasingly declined. While "Come Around Sundown" (2010) and "Mechanical Bull" (2013) were still works of pursuing success and attempting to reinvent themselves within their own set framework, the last two outputs finally lost their mojo. "Walls" (2016) and the aforementioned "When You See Yourself" groaned with immature effort. The family band was saturated with the successes of the past and didn't know where the journey should take them. Off into compositional arbitrariness, to the eternal headliner of the housewives? Or should they regain a bit of edge and dare to dial back the polished production and bring out the spirit of the early days? After an intensive phase of introspection, Caleb Followill and co. opted for the latter and have thus achieved an unexpected career turnaround.

Fun versus reality
Instead of once again losing themselves in overproduced cascades of sound and strumming along soullessly, the family band suddenly rediscovered the fun of doing things. The album title "Can We Please Have Fun", which was proclaimed as a mantra during the songwriting and recording process and set the clocks back to zero within the band, says it all. In times of wars, economic crises, galloping right-wing radicalism and a literally burning earth, the fun factor is actually manageable, and the Followills themselves had to wade through a personal crisis because the mother of three of the band's members, Betty Ann Followill, passed away three years ago and was probably unknowingly the decisive trigger for the children and nephew to focus on the important things in life again: Community, family, friendship, nostalgia and musical romance. But where there seems to be no fun, you have to make it yourself.

In various interviews, the seasoned men rejoiced at how easily and effortlessly the work in their native Nashville came to them, even though the circumstances were not the easiest. Producer Kid Harpoon, who usually laces a wider sound corset for Miley Cyrus or Harry Styles, played an important part in this, but was pleasantly restrained with the bearded flannel shirt wearers and did not water down the sound. Quite the opposite - a basic track like the three-minute "Nothing To Do" is reminiscent of the band's early days a good 20 years ago in its concise simplicity. In "Nowhere To Run", the Kings Of Leon allow groovy funk parts to shine through and "Hesitation Generation", pleasantly enough, doesn't give a damn about overt opulence. The Kings Of Leon don't use the sledgehammer, but a certain sausage-like quality that suits the dignified music millionaires. The very first single release, "Mustang", was a surprise in that the sound tinsel of the recent past was stowed away in the cellar and the band opted for a young and fresh look.

Newly sorted
The label change and a conscious move away from the limelight have certainly reorganized the musical direction of Kings Of Leon. The lyrical and musical return to the early days was already noticeable on the mediocre previous album, with songs such as "Ballerina Radio", "Don't Stop The Bleeding" or "Ease Me On", the Nashville kings may not have managed a real top hit, but a showcase of collaborative songwriting no longer thought possible in this form, which can only unfold so honestly and openly when problems, worries and setbacks are shared by everyone. Sometimes Bloc Party shines through, sometimes a surf guitar, sometimes a bossa nova passage. The sunny lightness of the album title may not always be conveyed by the songs evoked by different emotions, but the Kings Of Leon have found themselves again - and that in itself is surprise enough.

Live at Lido Sounds
On June 27, Kings Of Leon will open this year's Lido Sounds at the Urfahranermarkt in Linz. In addition to their crisp new songs, they will of course also be performing the great classics from their 20-year career as a band. Tickets and all other information about the indie festival of the year are still available at www.oeticket.com.