Kings of Leon - Aha Shake Heartbreak

I try not to buy CDs from bands I've only heard one song by. It usually ends in pain and heartache, and I've sold many a CD to CD Warehouse as a result. There have been exceptions, of course: my obsession with the Barenaked Ladies was derived entirely from the song "One Week;" I bought the Flaming Lips' Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots on the strength of "Fight Test" alone; I started listening to the Old 97s because of a song I heard from their frontman's solo work. But those are the exceptions, not the rules. Let us not forget the pain The Strokes caused me when I tried to listen to one of their CDs (I only managed to ever listen to it all the way through once...God, that was a terrible album).

So I probably shouldn't have gone and bought the Kings of Leon's Aha Shake Heartbreak just because I liked "Four Kicks." Sure, it's a fun song, with a great beat and a pulse-pounding guitar, but that doesn't always mean the rest of the album will be that quality. As it turns out, the album is hit-and-miss, sometimes scoring a direct hit (with tracks such as the aforementioned "Four Kicks") and sometimes going so wide of the target that it's painful.

The biggest issue I have with the album is the singer's voice. The affectation and vocal histronics are a bit much for me. He sounds like he's trying to do some sort of David Byrne via Bob Dylan thing, and it doesn't always work. It's an acquired taste, I guess, and one that grows easier to listen to with each spin of the disc (c'mon, I'm the guy who listens to Dylan and the Flaming Lips and Neil Young; bad voices don't necessarily put me off too much). Musically, it's a very strong record. The band consists of only four guys: a singer, a guitarist, a bass player, and a drummer. They manage to make a lot of noise anyway.

Really, they sound like southern rock stripped of the country influences that usually implies. There's plenty of crunchy guitar riffs, thumping basslines, and gut-stomping drums. They're fond of changing tempos mid-song, shifting gears in a heartbeat and bringing the energy up another notch. It's southern rock for the new millenium, filtered through the twenty-odd years of musical styles that have existed since the Allman Brothers and Lynard Skynard ruled the roost.

Lyrically, the Kings of Leon are a mixed bag. Some of their tunes are wildly inventive--"Four Kicks," for example, is about cock fighting (y'know, like with the birds? Pervert)--but some are too abstracted to really make any sense. With the singer's vocal affectations, the lyrics are really nothing more than a way to add a shade of texture or emotion to the music, just another instrument in their arsenal. And these guys treat music like a weapon, cutting and hacking their way through each song as though glory lay on the other side of a three minute track.

Overall, Aha Shake Heartbreak is a fairly strong album with a minimum of filler. The Kings of Leon are making music by their own rules, bizarre and incomprehensible as those rules may sometimes seem to the listener. It's a grower, and if you give the album a chance, it'll hook you.

~chuck

Song of the Moment: Kings of Leon, "Four Kicks"