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.