Say what you will about Kings of Leon: They are probably one of the last groups we’ll watch go from scrappy garage-rock origins to scoring mainstream radio hits and headlining arenas and festivals with the old-school battle-stance of two guitars, a bass, and a drumkit. They are more of an actual rock band than contemporaries like the National, or St. Vincent, or Arcade Fire—those indie titans that too transitioned from the small rooms to the big fields. You know the narrative by now: sheltered Southern kids raised on religion, finding rock ‘n’ roll and sin, then sobering up and settling down. It’s a classic narrative, one that's almost too perfect in its adherence to tropes. There were all the cringe-worthy lyrics about dangerous women and the bandmembers’ own profligacy. There were also, at one point, songs that were invigorated and scuzzy and endearing enough to swat away concerns about a doofy band playing into all manner of classic bad-boy rock archetypes—the types of rock songs few others have been swinging for in the 21st century.
Those are the things about Kings of Leon that come across as real enough. But as they sold their souls over again—this time not for boozy Southern rock, but for schlocky corporate-music refrains—all sorts of questions popped up. What even is this band? “Southern Strokes turned Southern U2” is the oft-cited transition, but over time both comparisons began to feel overly generous. Instead, the Followill crew’s arena-conquering material lumped them closer to mewling radio-rock bands than the indie sphere with which they'd flirted. When it was just “Use Somebody” and Come Around Sundown, it was still easy to hope that Kings of Leon would reclaim some of the roughened charm of their earlier work. “Supersoaker,” the lead single from their 2013 album Mechanical Bull, had even hinted at a return-to-form; it had the earworm ease of the best Aha Shake Heartbreak cuts, but conveyed it with a little more clarity and control. And while the songwriting across that record proved unsteady, it was at least a turn in the right direction. It offered an image of Kings of Leon as grizzled almost-veterans, no longer forcing choruses to soar when they could be more evocative as they rumbled.
Well, then they made WALLS. It’s their seventh full-length, and it too marks a return-to-form, but this time the form they're revisiting is the soulless would-be transcendence of all the worst stuff on Only by the Night and Come Around Sundown. This is, uh, not the form they should return to. WALLS mostly finds Kings of Leon back in that mode of offering up fast-food “whoa-oh” singalongs and guitars that chime as distinctly as wallpaper.
