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Yet it was 2008’s ‘Only By The Night’ that launched the Followills into the stratosphere – and specifically into the US, as they finally broke through to their homeland with mammoth single ‘Use Somebody’ and the ubiquitous ‘Sex On Fire’.Īs pressure and tensions grew, their sound wavered on the next two albums: 2010’s ‘Come Around Sundown’ and its subsequent world tour saw the band exhaust themselves in the studio and snap in person when the world took notice. 2004 follow-up ‘Aha Shake Heartbreak’ featured some of the band’s most beloved hits – ‘The Bucket’, ‘King Of The Rodeo’ – while album three, 2007’s ‘Because Of The Times’, saw them become a little darker, more angst-ridden. It was a different story back in 2003, when Kings Of Leon’s ‘Youth & Young Manhood’ won them the hearts of fans across the UK NME called the record “one of the best debut albums of the last 10 years” upon release. “I feel like I’m getting to a point where that side of me is no longer there.” “When you’re a young man and you’re the frontman of a band, there’s an ego that comes along with that,” he says. The album also telegraphs a more open-hearted, collaborative approach for Caleb as a writer, who usually works alone. It’s the result of more “democratic” songwriting, Nathan says, with youngest Followill brother Jared, in particular, contributing a huge amount lyrically. There’s Kings Of Leon’s best attempt at funk on ‘Stormy Weather’ and their most political statement in ‘Claire And Eddie,’ which warns the listener of the growing threat of climate change. Lively stories about cowboys (‘The Bandit’) and happy endings (‘Fairytale’) sit alongside confessionals about getting clean (‘Supermarket’) and holding onto fleeting romance (‘Golden Restless Age’). The result is more synths, more fun, more challenging material intertwined with the riffs and rhythms long-time fans keep returning to. “When you’re making your eighth record, you’ve probably used all your tricks at some point,” admits Nathan. The comfort hasn’t bred complacency: ‘When You See Yourself’ is a rich, soulful record, connecting with the feverish vigor of the band’s first albums as much as the mournful wisdom acquired over two decades on the road. I think that level of comfort came out on the record.” “And we had such amazing memories from Blackbird it was so familiar to us. “There was no constraint getting this record done by a certain time,” Nathan says. Here they embarked on their longest studio stint to date, working for 10 months throughout 2019 and into 2020. Nathan, at 41 the eldest Followill and ostensible father figure of the band, says Kings Of Leon are “a lot more youthful on this record” and explains on a separate phone call: “That’s a result of being well-rested and being confident in the studio.” After recording 2016’s ‘WALLS’ in LA, they returned to Nashville’s Blackbird Studios in Nashville, having made their hugely successful third, fourth and fifth albums there. Then again, 18 years since their debut album, they’ve certainly lived more than a few different ones. Their new album, ‘When You See Yourself’, finds the band reinvigorated, excited and grateful to be making music for the first time in what feels like a lifetime. The strangeness of the pandemic seems to have bolstered the Followill clan – frontman Caleb, his brothers Nathan and Jared on drums and bass respectively, their cousin Matthew on guitar – in surprising ways.
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“We’re probably more excited than we normally would be,” Caleb tells us over the phone from Nashville, “because we’ve been sitting on a secret for a little while”. Some artists responded to the screech-and-halt state of the world by creating new music, but Kings Of Leon had already finished their eighth album – so they decided to make the most of it and take a year off. The once-moody young men who lived to spit and scream into a microphone are no more. READ MORE: Kings Of Leon – ‘When You See Yourself’ review: more confident and comfortable than everĪnd so NME finds the band today, taking stock of the quiet few months just passed and the material they’ve been itching to give the world since before it all started funnier, calmer, more optimistic and confident than ever.Wouldn’t you seize the chance to recentre yourself and put things on pause for a little bit, if you could? The last 20 years had barely let Kings Of Leon come up for air, spinning between raucous recording sessions, high-octane tours and parties. The last 12 months have robbed so many people of so much – plans, hopes, ideas frozen in a moment defined by panic – but, somehow, four men from Nashville seem to have gained more than most.