Come Around Sundown

For the past two days ‘Come Around Sundown’ has haunted my head with its melodic hooks, it’s power ballad similarities and the space the album allows. A key example of this is during ‘the face’, just before the opening verse of vocals hit us, it makes me go weak at the knees. In a time where most of the UK chart is full with records that feature as much sound compressed, or as many lyrics as possible, Kings of Leon have followed their predecessor Only by the Night with beautiful simplicity. I feel the band have taken a slight minimalist approach, and although I do not know every song or record the band have produced and polished, I am familiar with the country-rock sound the band used to unleash on us (Charmer, Four Kicks, the Bucket) and the previous albums commercial beauties (Sex is on Fire, Use Somebody), I am finding some coherent comparable sounds to FOALS (Total Life Forever) if FOALS decide to adopt the Stadium-rock sound and wanted to move away from their house parties.

I rarely think this much about an album, especially a contemporary album, below is a video of a performance of the lead single ‘Radioactive’ performed at the EMA’s in Madrid, a couple of days ago:


My favourite element of the album is the space, as already mentioned. Music should be open to interpretation and it doesn’t always need to be shoved down your throat. Very deserving album to top the chart, I believe this is their best yet.