Wednesday, November 11, 2009

in rememberance: kings of leon





I’d heard others lament the transgression of previously-great bands into mainstream mediocrity and the consciousness of the cultural bankrupt long before I’d experienced that grief myself. From Daft Punk’s ‘Human After All’ to Wilco’s ‘A Ghost is Born,’ from Massive Attack, Pavement, Air, Beastie Boys, The Verve – all are artist’s that have damn near broken people’s hearts with their decreasing vitality and relevance. That’s just a selection of them. Try talking to someone who loved Muse ten years ago about the now Big Day Out-headlining band.

This is a chance to reflect. This is an obituary for the integrity and awesomeness behind a band once close to my heart. A chance to remember the good times so readily obscured by the more recent and more publicised shite. Stand up, Kings of Leon.

I bought Youth and Young Manhood while in Sydney for my uncle’s wedding without having heard so much as single note from it beforehand. I was at that point in my mid-teenage years where, devoid of an older brother and a dad that kept abreast of new music (and back when Myspace was actually used by high schoolers and not bands), I would readily hand over my monies with an adolescent, explorative excitement based on the thirty seconds I heard at listening stations (back when people still bought CDs), or the cover art, or one good review I read in some largely irrelevant publication. I genuinely miss that practice, especially the lack of expectations I had for every release and thus the greater frequency with which I was pleasantly surprised; the complete lack of aesthetic criteria or credibility concerns that now colour almost all my consumption. It was the product of a musical naivety I wish I still had. It made every release something of a mystery and almost everything (including – briefly – Jet) sound quite fresh.

I didn’t get to listen to the Kings of Leon album all weekend. It sat in my bag until I was back in Brisbane, three days worth of anticipation making it all but fizz with kinetic energy, as though it would be too hot to actually hold. I put it on, only to be met by the raw guitars and Caleb Followill’s distinct drawl came pouring out of my speakers. What the fuck was that voice? Was he drunk, stoned, getting a wristie in the vocal booth, hamming it up for kicks? He sings every word like he’s smoking a cigarette in a post-coital haze.

The whole thing lacked a self-consciousness, perhaps even self-awareness, that I too was lacking. It’s the kind of outlook that attends the feeling of isolation, that no one out there is listening to you. Three brothers and a cousin in their late teens/early twenties, looking like they’ve just emerged from a bomb shelter after twenty-five years of thinking it’s still the ‘70s, making music about cross-dressing, murder, and fucking. The latter subject would basically grow to encompass all of their lyrical concerns; the claustrophobia and idiosyncrasies of small-town southern America replaced with introspective, self-absorbed musings on the rock star condition and their penises.

Their next album was better received by critics but never managed to win me over like their first did. There was hardly a way that it could match the sheer shock I felt when I first played that album, especially since it came along a couple of years after heavy music consumption. It was still quite rad though and even a little more varied, but you could hear the restraint creeping into their music, the ideas of what an album should be. It was cool, but it wasn’t the same.

I won’t go on from here. If you’ve ever switched on Video Hits or Nova in the last two years then you probably know where the sad end to this tale. Suffice it to say that I’d sooner set fire to my own genitalia than voluntarily listen to ‘Sex on Fire’ any time soon.

The point isn’t even that the band got crap. A lot of bands dissolve in a lack of ideas or degenerate into their own karaoke act. These guys didn’t just get crap, it’s like they shifted their entire aesthetic – their image and their sound – to please people who didn’t even like them in the first place. This is more than disappointment – it’s betrayal. It’s like the band saying that your love isn’t valuable enough; they’d rather lose that love in exchange for the approval of thousands of twelve year olds.

They now look like a boy band, their old material barely appears in live sets, and their lyrics, once largely indecipherable through his drawl, are front, centre, and entirely embarrassing. The boys Followill now have their own clothing label being released exclusively through a store in Copenhagen.

I’ve not heard the latest album straight through once – I’ve barely made it past the first few tracks. They were playing at a festival I was at in Europe and I went out of my way to miss them. I cringe when their film clip comes on TV, as it tries to awkwardly weave a storyline between backstage and live footage and soft-focus close-ups on Caleb.

I’ve been turkey slapped by a band I once loved. My revenge, I guess, is that they’ve no credibility or cool left, and will probably have to perform ‘Sex On Fire’ at every concert for the rest of their lives.

Whether they feel that pain as the tween market shouts along… well… the kids’ pocket money might buy them nice clothes and expensive haircuts, but will it be able to buy peace within their conscience after having brutally betrayed their original fanbase? For having inflicted their recent run of shithouse Creedence-meets-U2 singles on the world?

RIP to old, good Kings of Leon. You’re dead to me.

Kings of Leon - 'Happy Alone'

Kings of Leon - 'California Waiting'

9 comments:

  1. I feel this is some of your best writing, Matt. Reminds me of a Craig Mathieson essay. You must buy Playlisted. http://playlisted.com.au

    ReplyDelete
  2. Great piece, despite a bit of a disagreemnt this end.

    I didn't really get into them around Y&YM - thought they were very poor live but perhaps it was because we had to contend wih all the hype. Then got album 2 and loved it, then Because Of The Times blew that out the water. I loved it and still do! I now look back to debut album and enjoy that equally.

    I agree though, upon reflection, they've dropped a bomb with this album...just as they'd got me onside!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Let's not forget that the music business is, after all, exactly that. A business. While I don't entirely disagree with you, I think that it shows some remarkable lack of perception to ditch a beloved band because of their newfound popularity. Good on them for making money, and for making popular music that isn't about "lady lumps", and doesn't feature characters from Gossip Girl on back-up vocals. Instead of Kings of Leon losing all their integrity, perhaps you could say they're bringing a little integrity to the vapid void of talentless auto-tuning that is popular music.

    Having a song on the OC soundtrack didn't kill Modest Mouse. Or Interpol. Or Of Montreal. Calexico and The Constantines have tracks on the One Tree Hill soundtrack. Frightened Rabbit played in an episode of Grey's Anatomy. If everyone starts liking a band, it doesn't mean that they're suddenly worthy of derision. In some respects, we should celebrate that our favourite musicians are reaching more people, and our peers finally understand what we've always been so crazy about. Surely we should be basing our musical tastes on what sounds good, rather than only listening to the underground, the unknown, the unpromoted, or the secret. I think we all need to rethink our strangely selective, elitist standards when it comes to what music we listen to. Isn't it, after all, just about the music, man?

    ReplyDelete
  4. thank you anonymous.
    i wrote a post about not writing off bands just because they're famous. that one dealt with animal collective.
    my issue with kings of leon isn't that they're famous, or that they're on soundtracks - it's that their music is really crap these days. and more importantly, that they compromised their sound and image to become famous.
    even if i were still the only person in my group of friends who knew kings of leon i would still hate 'sex on fire' because the song itself is terrible, not least because it revolves around the titular phrase that pimps his own white-boy sexual prowess in the least-poetic way.

    ReplyDelete
  5. As a different anonymous to the first one (good point, whoever you are), I just want to say:

    Oh for god's sake. So you don't like Kings of Leon anymore. Enough with the fire and brimstone approach and the "you cut me deep, man" attitude. Maybe they, who are probably calm and non-elitist (because most people are, you know), needed a break from fans with opinions like yours.

    Peace.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Oh, if only I had the bottle to hide behind my anonymity eh? ;)

    ReplyDelete
  7. dear anonymous,

    if they need a break from fans like me then congratulations, they have earned that break. they worked hard for it - you don't just become that crap overnight - so i hope they enjoy it.

    i'm glad you like new kings of leon. i hope you'll also like schoolies when you graduate in a few years time.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Total agreement (agreeance?). Y&YM has special heart place for me, but with each album my interest has progressively deteriorated. And not, Anon, because they're LIEK REALLY POPULAR NOW. Because they're kind of shit now. Public exposure sure doesn't make a band suck. Fans don't make a band suck. And yet, they suck.
    And I shudder to see QOTSA/Josh Homme heading in that direction since 'Lullabies...'

    ReplyDelete