Tag Archives: kings of leon

#1460: Kings of Leon – Velvet Snow

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And so we’ve reached the final time a Kings of Leon song will be mentioned in this long, long list. You can click on the ‘kings of leon’ tag below and see how far my coverage of the group goes back. To get things out of the way, you’ll probably notice that any of their material from Only by the Night onwards is absent. Stuff from that album on the blog is scarce in itself. I am one of those people who think that the band weren’t the same from ‘Sex on Fire’ to the present, I just don’t go out of my way to loudly voice my opinion on the matter because nobody cares. There’s nothing to be gained by saying “I miss when Kings of Leon made this type of music,” ’cause it just is what it is now. I say that. I might have said that exactly in a prior post, but I’ve learned not to care so much now. Those first three albums though, I mean, they were pretty good, weren’t they? Youth & Young Manhood, Aha Shake Heartbreak, Because of the Times. That’s a trilogy right there. I can go down as saying Aha Shake… is my favourite out of them. The fact that I covered more songs from it than their other albums is probably a tell.

I got Aha Shake… as a gift for Christmas in 2008. It’s a story I told before. At that time, I had a YouTube channel where all I did was upload albums and songs at a time when copyright laws weren’t so stringent. That’s another thing I must have referred to in the past. Aha Shake… was one of the albums I uploaded on there, I think in four parts ’cause of the 10-minute limit YouTube used to have, so I got to know the deeper cuts from the album just through having to listen to them over and over again. I’m sure I went through the LP on iTunes or something too. Depending on what version of the album you have, ‘Velvet Snow’ is the penultimate or third-last track on Aha Shake…, the last proper burst of energy the band provide on the whole record before things slow down on following tracks ‘Rememo’ and ‘Where Nobody Knows’. It doesn’t give you any time to prepare for how it starts too. Just comes straight out of the gate with its rockabilly tempo and a guitar riff barking away on the left-hand side. It’s only made up of three notes, but the way it’s played and how it sounds, you remember it very easily.

Not saying the album has a concept or anything, but thinking about the songs on Aha Shake…, a lot of them appear to be about women. Women Caleb Followill likes, others not so much. I was thinking ‘Velvet Snow’ was the former. He was impressed by the way this girl’s getting down on a dancefloor. I thought ‘velvet snow’ referred to a graceful way of walking. But being ‘stuck in it’ doesn’t sound too good. And he subliminally refers to her as a ‘whore’ and a ‘ho’ by really punctuating the syllables in ‘snow’ and ‘floor’. Then he mentions drowning this person in the very last verse. Yeah, I don’t think Followill likes this particular character at all. But the music does a good job of hiding the negativity. Feels like a party should be going on with this playing in the background. Matthew Followill’s guitar solo in the instrumental break is a riot. There’s a style of music it reminds me of, want to say based around Latin-America for some reason. The chords and how they descend reminds me of something in that area. And I like how the intensity’s brought down for the last verse and those oohing harmonies are brought to add a sense of resolution. It’s a rather modest ending compared to how the song initially starts, I appreciate the dynamic. So thanks, Kings of Leon, for all the music. Keep doing your thing. I have my favourites. I’ll carry on listening to them.

#1235: Kings of Leon – Soft

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Here comes another song from Kings of Leon’s Aha Shake Heartbreak. I think I’ve told the story of how the album entered my life in posts before. Just click on that “aha shake heartbreak” or “kings of leon” tag at the bottom, and they’ll redirect you. The most recent Kings track I’ve posted about was ‘Slow Night, So Long’, also from the same album, and the tale of my experience with ‘Soft’ is almost exactly the same. It’s been a track on the “all songs” phone playlist for so long now, I can’t pinpoint the exact moment where it clicked and I thought it would be a song I’d be listening to for years. It would be a disservice to try and make some fairytale situation up. It’s just always been there, and that’s good enough for me.

‘Soft’ is the seventh track on Aha Shake… and mainly written to shut up critics who wouldn’t stop talking about the things the band got up to when they were out and about, on tour or whatever. Being the young rock ‘n’ roll band they were back in ’04, they do the rock ‘n’ roll things that hang out with models and party. The media loved that sort of stuff. Still do now. Caleb Followill had had enough of the coverage, so he wrote about an experience of one of those occasions where he was hanging out with a supermodel, but got too drunk that he couldn’t perform. He was soft. The whole track’s quite self-explanatory. Whether or not that led to critics talking less about the band, I’m not sure. But he wanted to write songs that were about the things people go through that are embarrassing or not taken seriously. And erectile dysfunction is definitely one of those subjects.

I once saw someone describe this track as Kings of Leon’s “most Strokes-ish song”. Or “Strokes-like”. One of those. And I kind of get that. The bright guitar lick that starts it off combined with the the rhythm guitar that joins in soon after does remind me of something that Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr. would do. Though the reggaeton-like groove that plays underneath is definitely sets it apart. During the verses, Caleb Followill sings a line, Matthew Followill plays a guitar lick in response, and the choruses see the band rock out a little more, with Matthew Followill playing a climbing/falling guitar riff before falling into the reggaeton feel again. A big nod should also go to Jared Followill on the bass guitar, whose lines during the verses are probably the most hummable parts of the whole song. But I guess the big highlight of the track is the ending section where the band kinda go into double time, into party mode, with Caleb repeating the song’s last line and at an instance almost to the point where his voice completely breaks. All very nice. So here’s an Aha Shake era live performance of the track to round things off.

#1223: Kings of Leon – Slow Night, So Long

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It was during the Aha Shake Heartbreak era of Kings of Leon that I properly go into the band, due mainly to the three singles that popped up around those youthful times of 2004/05. But I didn’t get my hands on a physical copy of it until 2008, when I got it as a gift for Christmas. I don’t know what it was about that year that made me request it. By that time, Only by the Night was the band’s latest album which hoisted the group into household names thanks to ‘Sex on Fire’ and ‘Use Somebody’ which were now worldwide hits. I’m going to guess that, even at the age of 13 that I was that year, I was one of those people who thought, “Man… Kings of Leon have changed,” and wanted one of their old albums to remind me of the good times. But that is just a guess, I feel like I might be making that up completely.

‘Slow Night, So Long’ opens the album up, and I’ll straight up say it doesn’t really hold a lot of sentimental value. It was one of those songs where I heard it that first time and knew that it was a keeper, and so it’s been in the library ever since. Unlike the opener on the album before, which got things started quite swiftly, ‘Slow Night…’ builds itself up layer by layer, letting the anticipation set in before the whole band eventually kick into gear. Gotta appreciate that bass guitar hook by Jared Followill in that introduction, it’s the melody of that which Caleb Followill almost mirrors with his vocals and the riff that I think really ties the whole song together. I didn’t know this before typing out, so it’s a surprise to me as much as it might be for you, but the song concerns Caleb Followill’s feelings about a girl younger brother Jared was seeing at the time. He kind of liked her, the feelings weren’t reciprocated. It was a weird thing going on there. And Followill at the end of the song asks where the ‘leading ladies’ can be found, in the search for an emotionally stable relationship. KOL songs in those days were usually about women in some way, but would never have guessed any of that myself.

But as the people who enjoy this song will know, this track has a little surprise for you. The band come to a big finish, but there’s still about a minute and a bit remaining until time runs out. And after a bit of suspense, with Nathan Followill’s last chord still sort of ringing nearing silence, Caleb Followill’s guitar comes in on the right-hand side introducing a completely unrelated chord progression and segueing into the smooth coda to which you wanna grab your partner and slow dance to. Even got a little güiro going on low in the mix there. During this part, Caleb asks the “gold digger mothers” out there if “they’re too good to tango with the poor boys”, which I think could mean anything whilst also being very obvious. And with a nice touch of piano, the whole song comes to its actual close. But not really because ‘King of the Rodeo’ picks up right where the next bar would begin. No time to rest before kicking things up again.

#1146: Kings of Leon – The Runner

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Can you believe Kings of Leons’ Because of the Times turns 20 in three years time? It just doesn’t seem right. I was alive and well during that whole era of the band, but it doesn’t feel like it was happening 17 years ago. In the place of the band’s discography, it sort of captures a transitional moment where the band were sticking to the rawer deal that people came to know them from their first two albums while exploring a wider territory, going bigger in their soundscapes that would fit in a stadium setting. Then they properly went for the latter on Only by the Night, and we all know how that went. The transitional aspect gives it a charm that I appreciate it for, even if it may not be my favourite album of the band’s. I’m one of those people who’ll say it’s probably their last great record though.

‘The Runner’ is the tenth song on Times. It’s only struck me now how quite similar it is to ‘Rememo’ from Aha Shake Heartbreak. They both depend on the 6/8 waltz time. They sort of have this Western-wandering-on-the-range atmosphere about them. Though while ‘Rememo’ is delivered with an intimacy that could lull you to sleep, ‘The Runner’ is handed a bigger soundscape that properly comes into life when the enveloping guitars enter the frame during the swaying choruses. It also doesn’t rely on a two-note melody, which makes things a lot more dynamic. I like that there are two guitar riffs the song revolves around. The first being Caleb Followill’s lone guitar that opens the track and then the acoustic guitar melody which is then mirrored by the vocal during the verses. Both memorable in their own respective ways.

The track, in my view, seems to be from the perspective of a narrator who tends to be on the move a lot of the time, having to spend large periods of it away from his lady as a result. The song’s title phrase doesn’t appear in the lyrics, but I usually assume it’s the nickname of this narrator. They handle whatever comes their way, whatever life brings them, praying to Jesus that they’ll be guided through hard times ahead. The first verse depicts the scene of ‘The Runner’ on the rails on their latest travel, with the second focusing on the lady left behind and giving the listener a little glimpse into her backstory. The choruses bring the two characters together, with the Runner detailing their worry about the lady’s whereabouts and implied infidelity. I mean, that’s what I get from it all, anyway. I’ve always enjoyed this one. It’s a little under the radar, but it’s very much rewarding after every listen.

#1112: Kings of Leon – Rememo

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On the last Kings of Leon post on here, I made note that the Aha Shake Heartbreak era of the band was the one that properly introduced me to them, in terms of me actually knowing what the members looked like, who played what, what each member’s name was, et cetera, et cetera. And it’s true. The video for ‘The Bucket’ came on TV one day, it was those guys who had ‘Red Morning Light’ on FIFA 2004, and then from that point on, Kings of Leon would be a regular occurrence throughout my lifetime. The videos for ‘Four Kicks’ and ‘King of the Rodeo’ followed, both songs that I thought were great in 2005 and still hold up today in my eyes. So three successful singles out of three, that’s 100%. Sounds like an instant purchase, right? Well, you’d think. I didn’t get Aha Shake… until years later. I think as a Christmas gift in 2008. I remember because it was during a verse of ‘Pistol of Fire’ that my cousin asked me why I listened to the kind of music I did. Good times.

Depending on which continent you live, ‘Rememo’ is either the album closer, or the record’s penultimate track before it truly ends with the bonus song ‘Where Nobody Knows’. Being from the UK, I’m one of those who fall in the latter. Thus I also got the version of the album with the alternate cover (which I want to say a lot of people prefer to the original) and a nice family picture of the band as kids, hidden underneath the CD tray. The track brings the proceedings to a close (or near-close) with a relaxing, sleep-inducing waltz-timed tune. The melody only relies on two notes (both from the vocals perspective and on the guitars’ too), but it’s that simplicity on those fronts that make ‘Rememo’ one of the album’s sneaky high points for me. It’s almost like a lullaby. Its lyrics aren’t as innocent as those that you would find in those, though.

A prevalent theme that runs throughout the lyrics Aha Shake… is the pursuit of women and wanting to get with them, and it makes an appearance yet again on ‘Rememo’. In the first few lines too. “The giggling virgin overlooking me” in the second verse was something that I thought was referring to the Virgin Mary. You know, like the narrator’s living this weary, tired life and the Virgin Mary witnesses overhead and laughs with forgiveness. But it may just be referring to the point of view the narrator has while looking up at a girl he’s having sex with. Gotta say I like my interpretation more. In an interview with Zane Lowe, Caleb Followill mentioned that the “dripping beard as cold as hell…” refrain was one that didn’t go down too well with his parents because of the foul language. Wish I could find that interview, but looks like not even YouTube has it. I swear the interview happened though. The track doesn’t say much of anything, it doesn’t matter anyway as Followill even sings, but he writes it as a reminder/memo to himself that he feels the way he does and writes it as a gift to the audience. Eventually it tails off on a whimsical turn, feels like stumbling upon this old, abandoned carousel, where these (I think) woodwinds enter the frame – I think they’re keyboard generated anyway – with these occasional chimes and rickety drum patterns. There’s a good sense of closure here. Then ‘Where Nobody Knows’ sort of reinforces it as a bonus.