Детали релиза : Kings Of Leon - Can We Please Have Fun (2024) [FLAC (tracks)]

Album review

As the title of their ninth album suggests, the Followills—three brothers and a cousin who are creeping towards middle age with careers intact—now long to cruise and chill. But somehow these dedicated creators can't quite get away from making new music. A flash of the contradictions inherent in being both family men and rock stars slips into "Actual Daydream" where Caleb Followill coolly recounts this autobiographical travelogue, "Fashion week's a blur/ And everybody slurs/ And feels out of style/ Home is nice and warm." That self-reflection continues on the slow build of the melodically solid "Split Screen" where he quietly sings "Is this a middle of a life thought?/ A revelation on a split screen." While they clearly still have much to say and speculate upon—mixing the circumstances of their personal lives with larger truths—the energy that made their early records fun still bursts through on the album's single, "Mustang." Opening with plucked electric guitar strings, it roars to life as Caleb passionately cries out, "There's a mustang in the city/ And it's calling me out/ Are you a mustang or a kitty/ What are you all about?" What he's actually singing here is beside the point: his passion sells it. "Mustang" is also one of Kings of Leon's patented soft-loud rockers, which after twenty years as a family band, have lost none of their driving vehemence. Produced by Kid Harpoon and recorded by Brian Rajaratnam and Emi Trevena at Dark Horse Recording in Franklin, Tennessee, and Henson Recording Studios in Hollywood, Can We Please Have Fun has an impressive, brawny sound. Deliberately fuzzy in spots, the mix balances Caleb along with siblings Nathan (drums) and Jared (bass), and cousin Matthew (guitar). The band's softer side, along with Caleb's falsetto, emerges on the serpentine, bass-thumping "Don't Stop The Bleeding." Bass also opens the faster paced "Nothing To Do." Set against buzzing, crying guitars repeating a ringing motif, Caleb again grabs hold of his brand of anxiety-ridden frontman poetics: "Touched by the thunder/ Kissed by the rain/ I'm a man on a mission of going insane." The Followills are a vanishing breed: a big time rock band that still remembers how to bring it on every album.

© Robert Baird/Qobuz