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Kings Of Leon 'Youth And Young Manhood'

added 17 July 2003 at 16.31

Three sons of a preacherman, plus their drumming cousin, discover rock through their boozy pop’s regular wanderings from the path of righteousness. On the long drives between Pentecostal meetings, he’d guiltily tune into FM radio and thus switch his itinerant family onto the joys of the ‘Stones, Neil Young, etc.

In today ’s celebrity-fixated climate, it doesn’t get much hotter than that, especially when topped off with the enviable biographical cherry that the Followill family were discovered by the man who signed The Strokes.

Those who are actually interested in the Kings’ music will note that ‘Youth and Young Manhood’ is the most obviously commercially-viable guitar-pop album since ‘Is This It?’ Tracks like the bouncy ‘Happy Alone’ sound the spit of ‘Last Nite’, but as refracted through the Followills’ bizarre Southern consciousness.

Beardy singer Caleb’s indigenous drawl calls to mind Confederate-waving greats such as Ronnie Van Zant (Lynyrd Skynyrd), Gregg Allman (The Allman Brothers Band) and most especially ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons circa 1973’s ‘Tres Hombres’. Another significant reference is Captain Beefheart, thanks to Caleb ’s erratic delivery, which hits some mighty tight-trousered screeches and often reduces to a tangential mutter. On the plus side, this lends a near-mystical dimension to the mundane, near ‘C86’ jangle of tracks like ‘Joe ’s Head’. However, it also means that it’s hard to discern if any real meaning lurks in the lyrics behind that enigmatic title, or to feel any emotional punch from the record as a whole. That ’s a fairly major quibble, admittedly, but otherwise, Kings of Leon arrive fully formed, firing off excellent indie rock which strikes home on the level that Southern boys have always preferred - in the gut.

Kings Of Leon ‘Youth And Young Manhood’ (BMG) Released July 7 2003

This review originally appeared in X-Ray magazine

Fred Hill

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