Only By the Night
Artist: Kings of Leon
Label: RCA

In August 2003 I turned the debut album of The Kings of Leon up loud and imagined that if Lynyrd Skynyrd were young in the twenty first century this would be how they would have sounded. I felt it had more character than The Strokes and was more intrigued by what would happen next. In April 2005 I watched them live in Vancouver as they supported U2 on the Vertigo Tour and was so disappointed that I didn’t even buy their third album _Because of the Times_. September 2008 and it is time for reassessment. A fine performance on BBC’s Later With Jools Holland sent me off looking for _Only By the Night_. And I am reconnected. Their youth and young manhood is maturing and there is something a little bit more substantial about the sound of this their fourth album in five years. It is a little more measured, a little bit more spacious, giving Caleb’s southern “grawl” a chance to be heard. My frustration is what he does with that “grawl.” As distinctive a voice as there is in his peer group, you feel that he must have more to say than he has up until now. Four albums in you’d expect that the big questions he grew up with following his preacher dad around America might show themselves. He might reject his faith as he seems to on the brooding "Cold Desert," “Jesus don't love me, no one ever carried my load” or find it again as that cross around his neck might indicate but there is too little of substance. The disease of this “consensus rock” generation might be hindering the Leon boys really competing in the stadiums with U2.

Steve Stockman

Steve Stockman is the Presbyterian Chaplain at Queens University, Belfast, Ireland, where he lives in community with 88 students. He has written two books Walk On; The Spiritual Journey of U2 which he is currently updating and The Rock Cries Out; Discovering Eternal Truth in Unlikely Music. He dabbles in poetry and songwriting and he has a weekly radio show on BBC Radio Ulster (listen anytime of day or night @ www.bbc.co.uk/ni/religion/rhythmandsoul). He has his own web page--Rhythms of Redemption at http://stocki.ni.org . He also tries to spend some time with his wife Janice and daughters Caitlin and Jasmine.