Kings of Leon
Aha Shake Heartbreak
(HandMeDown Records)
Tucked away in the song 'Day Old Blues' on the Kings of Leon's second album is the lyric 'Betty, Betty Ann is praying/baby with a man-like lung'. Betty Ann, if you didn't know, is the mother of three of the Kings, former wife of Leon himself, the itinerant Tennessee preacher on whose back seat the brothers spent their childhood, and it's no wonder she's praying, if she's read about what her babies have been up to over the past year.
Since the success of their debut album, Youth and Young Manhood , barely 18 months ago, Nathan, Caleb and Jared Followill, together with cousin Matthew, have been touring almost ceaselessly, regularly counting supermodels and rock aristocracy at their gigs and their aftershow parties - which, if the articles are to be believed, are exemplary in their riotous rock and roll excesses. And somehow, in the midst of all this excitement, they have found the time to write 13 fine new songs and reunite with producer Ethan Johns to create a follow-up album that thumbs its nose at any notion of their success being unsustainable.
Youth and Young Manhood appeared just as the Strokes and the White Stripes had revivified interest in pared, back-to-its-roots rock; the Kings were immediately dubbed 'the redneck Strokes' by the music press, as if their music could only be one more inferior copy of rock's new gold standard. In fact, there's plenty of evidence in their songwriting of the musical flavours absorbed from Leon's car radio - Lynyrd Skynyrd, Creedence Clearwater Revival - but perhaps there's also a subliminal influence from Exile on Main Street, and not just in the throat-ripping vocals; thematically, it's entirely devoted to the business of getting your rocks off.
A year on the road has not only relieved three out of the four Followills, whose ages range from 18 to 25, of their virginity, it has paradoxically both expanded and pitifully reduced their horizons. Youth and Young Manhood was, if not exactly poetic, at least full of quirky vignettes and strange Southern characters remembered from childhood. Here, one or two songs drop in a reference to the wearying carousel of touring - 'Cancel the thing that I said I'd do/ I don't feel comfortable talking to you', runs 'The Bucket', which I can only interpret as being about interviews - but the rest are almost exclusively about casual shagging. Or, in the case of 'Soft', drinking yourself into a state where you'd like to be casually shagging but can't ('I'd pop myself in your body, I'd come all over your party, but I'm soft,' as the chorus nobly confesses).
Happily, the very element that makes their sound so distinctive - the gorgeously guttural voice of Caleb who, at 23, sounds as if he has at least 40 years' professional smoking experience behind him - renders these appallingly adolescent lyrics incomprehensible. Though the raw energy of their debut is missing, there is a polish and inventiveness to make up for it. 'Day Old Blues' is a sweetly louche yodel, while 'Rememo' is a smokey, late-night waltz in a dark basement club. Not only will it consolidate their reputation, it should also win legions of new admirers. Poor Betty Ann is going to be spending a lot more time on her knees.
To order Aha Shake Heartbreak for £13.99 with free UK p&p, call the Observer Music Service on 0870 836 0713
