Everett True does not like Kings Of Leon
Someone was accusing me of going soft on Kings Of Leon the other day. Bangs wept! I CANNOT have such aspersions cast on my professional integrity. The following is for him, my faceless accuser. Reprinted from Something Awful, 19/11/10.
Someone’s been lying to me.
Someone once told me that Kings Of Leon can rock. “I used to admire them for having Creedence hair,” remarks one ‘friend’ on Twitter, “but now I can see they’re just American jocks… like the awful Foo Fighters”.
Oh come on.
1. Hair-length has never been a good signifier of ability to rock, otherwise we’d all be in thrall to Poison.
2. Music is not football, American rules or otherwise.
3. Dave Grohl’s not that bad, is he? It’s a serious question. I haven’t knowingly listened to them since 2000. Foo Fighters have never released a song as mind-drudgingly dull and anaemic as ‘The End’ from the new Kings Of Leon album Come Around Sundown, which is like Coldplay and U2 rolled into one only A MILLION TIMES OVER, and features the most horrible guitar sound this side of Jonny Greenwood. Foo Fighters have never released a song as pompous and meandering and bombastic as ‘Pony Up’ from the new Kings Of Leon album Come Around Sundown, which is like Coldplay and U2 rolled into one only TEN MILLION TIMES OVER, and features the most horrible drumming this side of Journey. Have they? Foo Fighters have never released a song as shamelessly opportunistic as ‘Radioactive’ from the new Kings Of Leon album Come Around Sundown, wherein Kings Of Leon drop all pretence of wanting to sound like Coldplay and sound EXACTLY like U2, even down to the pope-felching ‘expressive’ vocals of Caleb Followill. Have they?
Oh wait. I’m thinking of the wrong Dave Grohl band.
“Their second album is great,” writes another Twitter ‘friend’. “They’ve since decided to become a Top 40 hit machine and I wish them all the best with that.” Look, let’s shout this out from the rooftops and wipe it in three-inch excrement across the chests of a thousand money-grabbing rock-destroying A&R men. I DON’T CARE WHAT KINGS OF LEON HAVE DONE BEFORE. Nothing can excuse this grey amorphous pottage of shoe-gazing guitars and rictus-inducing vocals, every song over-polished and wiped clean to buggery until all that is left of the original turd is an even smaller, even harder turd. I was expecting a mediocre Led Zeppelin rip from the fifth Kings Of Leon album, even a few dynamics. Not this. Not this pile of self-regarding, verbose, anodyne crap. How are the Kings Of Leon going to tell themselves apart from the Chris Martins and Bonos of this world when they meet at award ceremonies? I sure fucking hope their press machine remembers to write them name tags.
“There should be no thoughts on KOL after 2007,” states another ‘friend’. “They stopped being relevant 3 years ago.” (Who are all these assholes who once listened to Kings Of Leon? What is their fucking problem? Why are they following me on Twitter? Why don’t they go suck Perez Hilton’s bum-hole or something if they’re so into their celebrity culture and middle-of-the-sidewalk rock.) “Nothing that a bit of Warpaint can’t cure, surely? ;-)” suggests another. No, no! Don’t click on that link. It’s like… God, they even have the same fucking guitar sound as Kings Of Leon. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?
BRING ON THE PIGEONS
“Bring on the pigeons,” writes a Facebook follower.
“The pigeons were right,” states another.
Ah yes. That classic NME headline. “Kings Of Leon abandon gig after pigeon ‘shits in bassist’s mouth'”. Damn, but I’d never loved a pigeon as much as I had on that day.
Seems like either the folk who follow me on social networking sites really don’t like Kings Of Leon, or (more crucially) don’t want to be caught liking Kings Of Leon. Leave a comment about Kings Of Leon up on Facebook, and within minutes the insults are coming thick and fast.
- “Fucking wank” – well, no. Wanking is normally pleasurable, as is fucking. Kings Of Leon are not.
- “I like to listen to KOL while gassing my family” – see my point above. Unless you need to be in a bad mood before exterminating your folks.
- “Listening to Come Around Sundown is like a bad case of gastroenteritis … as the record progresses, the bowel movements become more frequent” – again, I would take issue with this. Bowel movements usually offer some form of relief. Come Around Sundown doesn’t.
- “Their new song sounds like a bad take on U2. Other than that, 2 words describe them – Boring & over-rated” – you can have a bad version of U2? Wow. You learn something new every day.
- “Cute. Boring music” – cute? Boring is cute? Whoa.
- “First album ok, followed by steady decline to current nightmare” – as the old punks used to say, never trust a hippie… I mean, former Kings Of Leon fan.
- “Meh” – meh to you too.
- “Hahahahahaha etc” – this is surely no laughing matter.
- “A study in the inverse curve popularity-vs-ability and shark-jumpers to a degree…” – in other words, they’re very good at what they do: create horrendous stadium-filling tat. The sheer mundane banality of Kings Of Leon’s music make Katy Perry sound like a genius. Not that I’m saying she isn’t.
- “Horrible, horrible thoughts”
- “I don’t think much of them at all…”
- “Whiney….”
- “**shudders**”
- “Yawn.”
- “Devoid of grace, beauty and humour. I actually prefer Then Jericho and I really don’t like those cunts” – ooh, now that is low. Fair, but low.
- “There are worse bands. Kasabian, The Killers, Coldplay & Snooze Patrol. But that’s it” – I beg to differ, sir. I beg to differ.
Kings Of Leon make rock music for people who don’t really like rock music.
Reverse those two words ‘really’ and ‘don’t’.
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