Able to sell out 20,000-seat venues in the UK, this Tennessee-born band of three brothers and a cousin has mystifyingly never achieved anywhere near that status in its homeland. Unfortunately, while the group’s fourth record is certainly its most experimental, it’s also the weakest, never really sparkling in its attempt to grasp the hand of Buzz Nation. After bursting out of the gate with two outstanding discs drenched in impeccably updated ’70s Southern boogie-rock (Youth and Young Manhood, Aha Shake Heartbreak), no real fan could blame the Followill clan for wanting to stretch things out a bit with last year’s Because of the Times, an uneven record that admittedly does improve with time. For Only By the Night, famously slurring singer/guitarist Caleb Followill handily improves his diction, but all at the same vocal level as a flatlined patient. The fuzz bombs that do hit the mark include the world’s only Armageddon anthem that doubles as a great pole-dancer (“Crawl”), the sultry but paranoid “Sex on Fire” and the bare-bones but effective “I Want You.” However, most of the record shows an obvious U2 influence — Matthew Followill’s cold, chiming guitars, whoo-hooed backing choruses and electronic blorts and blips on tracks like “Be Somebody,” “Use Somebody,” “Notion” and “Cold Desert.” They all, well, drone a bit. Lyrically, if you thought the band had said all they could about fighting, fucking, drinking and stumbling through life, they haven’t; it’s just not as interesting the Fourth Time Around. Make no mistake, the Kings are an amazing band well deserving of this tour’s larger venues, their recent SNL and Letterman gigs and this month’s Spin cover. But Only by the Night could have greatly benefited from some light. And a little more boogie, man.
This article appears in Oct 23-29, 2008.
