Review: Kings Of Leon - Come Around Sundown
After the highly acclaimed, multi-award winning and world touring behemoth that was 2008’s Only by the Night, Kings of Leon’s follow-up album ultimately leaves us with only a small taste of what was two years ago.
However, Come Around Sundown starts in promising fashion; the reverberating guitar motifs that open the first song, The End, immediately paint the pictures of crowd-surfing lunacy and firework explosions any stadium rock n’ roll gig should be famous for. This feeling soon fades into the background within three songs moving into music much closer to home for the Tennessee foursome.
The song Mary, introduces this theme with great execution highlighting the many features of the Blues Rock scene that is prevalent within south of the United States. Swing tempos from the drums, traditional rock n’ roll bass lines and a wonderfully tasteful, bluesy guitar solo, are all helped on by Caleb Followill’s southern vocal twang in front of them.
Unfortunately, this change in direction, while humble in its intent, starts to feel out of place after three songs that feel like they could have come out the previous album. This is not helped by the fact that the rest of the songs afterwards do nothing more to enhance this theme further. To name an example Birthday feels very generic and not up to the potential KOL can produce.
Problematically for the band, this album was always going to struggle after the massive success the past three years has given them. The new distinctly ‘southern’ and relaxed sound Come Around Sundown moves into convolutes a miss-match of styles along with the three beginning songs seeming to continue where the last album finished. This ultimately leaves you with an album that past KOL fanatics will be buying for three songs while offering thirteen.
