It’s very easy to rip on Kings of Leon. Over the years, they’ve mutated into a sort of bloated, arena-filling titan that resembles U2 without Bono to provide comic relief. But, despite sailing close to the wind on 2010’s ‘Come Around Sundown’, their recording career has never delivered a real abomination. Until now.
‘WALLS’, the band’s seventh LP, invites us to follow the Nashville quartet on a journey into the depths of their collective colon. Maybe you thought ‘Only By The Night’ did that already, but you’re wrong. That record arrived packing legitimately huge singles. ‘WALLS’ does not.
This LP sounds like Kings of Leon’s skeleton getting washed ashore on a beach lined with money. To place it alongside bands from their orbit, it’s not raucous enough to be the work of the Killers, while it’s not got the greasy, low-end rumble to compete with Pearl Jam.
Its aimless meandering even fails to properly grasp what made Kings of Leon decent to begin with. The southern, arse-shaking sensibilities of 2003’s ‘Youth & Young Manhood’ are briefly glimpsed on Around The World’s sandy guitar solo, but the effect is quickly ruined by a truckload of wet keyboards.
Jared Followill’s fuzzed-up, sleazy bass drives mid-album curio Over as Caleb delivers a gritty, tight-throated vocal that’s reminiscent of someone treating their craft with just the slightest hint of love. Alas, that’s lost when the song ambles past the six minute mark through nothing other than repetition.
Those “woah-oah-oah” moments that made Kings of Leon such a radio-bothering behemoth are idly cut-and-pasted throughout ‘WALLS’, resulting in empty gestures like Eyes On You. Keyboards then emulate strings in an attempt to invoke something grander than their source material on Conversation Piece, while the most memorable track here is Waste A Moment, if only because its bassline and backing vocals are lifted straight from Born To Run. You could have copied literally anything else, lads.
‘WALLS’ is selling and will continue to sell, because Kings of Leon are already inside your head, desperately clinging to that tiny, unfilled space you save for the names of soap characters and foreign curse-words. As everything from ‘WALLS’ threatens to leak into a pool of unintelligible vowels on the title track, Caleb declares: “You tore out my heart, you threw it away.” On this evidence, they probably deserve it.
Kings of Leon Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Sun February 19 2017 - LEEDS first direct Arena
Mon February 20 2017 - BIRMINGHAM Genting Arena
Fri February 24 2017 - NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE Metro Radio Arena
Sat February 25 2017 - LIVERPOOL Echo Arena
Mon February 27 2017 - GLASGOW SSE Hydro
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