Kings of Leon : Come Around Sundown

<span style="font-style: normal"><img src="http://www.qromag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/kingsofleoncomearound.jpg" alt=" " />For Kings of Leon's much anticipated follow-up, </span><i>Come Around Sundown</i><span style="font-style: normal">, the balance of great & middling is more in their favor,...
Kings of Leon : Come Around Sundown
7.5 RCA
2010 

Kings of Leon : Come Around Sundown Though it launched the Kings of Leon into the stratosphere, winning Grammy for Record of the Year, 2008’s Only by the Night (QRO review) was inferior to the preceding year’s Because of the Times (QRO review); without all of the inspiration that made Times that rare great marriage of alt- and country/rock, Night was a mixture of a few choice tracks where the Kings hit the nail on the head (such as singles “Sex Is On Fire” & the Grammy-winning “Use Somebody”) plus also-rans.  For their much-anticipated follow-up, Come Around Sundown, the balance of great & middling is more in their favor, but there’s still a balance.

Closer “Pickup Truck” aside, Sundown is heavily weighted towards its first half.  Opener “The End” and single “Pyro” do sad, epic country-rock love right, while between the two, single “Radioactive” puts some killer pressure into the band’s sound.  It can all make the Times-loving indie fan think that Sundown might just be the record that can make you forgive the Kings their stardom.

Unfortunately, from there Sundown really Comes down.  Big seventies country-rock “Mary” is actually good, like the sweeter subplot to Dazed and Confused, and the paean “Back Down South” works even for northern ears.  But there are also forgettable slow and sad pieces such as “The Face” or “Mi Amigo”, which don’t work the way “The End” and “Pyro” do.  And for back-to-back “Pony Up” and “Birthday”, the Kings go… funkier?  There’s some sort of wa-wa swish, bass-heavy backdrop to singer Caleb Followill’s standard vocals, and it’s not in the Leon wheelhouse.

Thankfully, “Pickup Truck” ends Come Around Sundown by reminding the listener, even the alt-listener, of everything they’ve loved about Kings of Leon, wrought in all the right ways that will touch even the L train Williamsburg hipster with the line, “You call that a pickup truck?”.  Because of the Times may have just been too high a bar for the band to ever match again (at least no one’s calling them the ‘Southern Strokes’ anymore, like when they first broke out…), top-to-bottom, and the Kings of Leon are still able to do it at times on Come Around Sundown, if not all the way through.

MP3 Stream: “Radioactive”

{audio}/mp3/files/Kings of Leon – Radioactive.mp3{/audio}

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