Come Around Sundown

Kings Of Leon: life after triumph

Many musicians would prefer to end up their career after releasing an album like what Kings Of Leon did in 2008 (Only By The Night) due to confidence that they are not able to repeat this success. Probably, even the Kings themselves would do the same, should this record be their fifteenth, or say, tenth. However, Only By The Night is just number four in their discography, the album that brought its makers all they dreamed about, in amounts they could never imagine, from countless legions of crazy fans to four Grammies. Still, along with the worldwide recognition, secured future and reserved page in the history of rock-n-roll highlights came a big responsibility, heavy burden, to say eve n more. From now on, Kings Of Leon will have to do everything they can to live up to their status. Their following records will be inevitably compared with Only By The Night, and the bitterest part is that the greatest chances are they will not win this comparison. Aware of this, the rockers decided to make their next studio CD something drastically different from Only By The Night.

The new album is tuned to a different mood

Arguably, the only apparent difference lying between Come Around Sundown and the 2008 effort is the atmosphere, emotional background. Nearly each second track here is dedicated to the issue of losing one’s place in life and broken hopes. Of all this tracks, singularly No Money is not a very good one. After all, makers of an album that sold more than six million copies all over the globe are not likely to know what living without money is like. Instead, we can enjoy powerful music and sincere lyrics in The Face, and Back Down South built around longing for home. You can understand what these guys have in their hearts and minds now. Within a very short period of time their lives turned around completely. Heavy gig schedule and warm welcome in any corner of the world can have anyone’s head spinning and lose the sense of home. The End, and Pickup Truck are two more sad songs, this time about love. The End, actually, is the album’s opener despite its title, and it does not sound like traditional number ones of rock-n-roll albums. Finally, we have to pay credits to Pyro, a clear statement of what the musicians were looking to do when they were only beginning to make this CD. The track is free of rough guitar riffs and a concert-friendly chorus, but what it stand out for is light acoustic guitar and a sweet flow of melancholy.

An excellent album that may stay overshadowed

Commenting on the up-coming release of Come Around Sundown, the Kings Of Leon members said that they were intended to bring back the days of youth and present a material that would remind of their early efforts. Might be, the band wanted to do so to smooth the guilt before old fans who were not very happy to hear their favorites becoming more commercialized with cleaner sound instead of garage sound that marked the first albums. Nevertheless, the reality proved these words only partially true. It is sufficient to try the single Radioactive that looks like something taken from the previous record. The musicians made another attempt to do something different from the music of the recent and glorious part in a track called Mary. The vocals do bring the associations with the primal rock-n-roll of the middle of the twentieth century, but the arrangements and instruments leave no doubt that we listen to the Kings Of Leon of the present days. We should not be really surprised at the similarity between the band’s two last records. They were even prepared by the same producers. Moreover, you have to be a very suspicious person to refuse to do what gives you moral and material satisfaction. The conclusion is that Come Around Sundown was released at the wrong time or by the wrong musicians. This is an excellent album, but it has thinnest chances in its battle against the predecessor.