There’s something very edgy about King of Leon’s new album.
To be sure, there’s a deep melancholy about the songs consisting this 4th major outing for the up-and-about rock band from Tennessee, one that is so reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen while in his peak during the 80’s; so terse and forceful, like a radiant harmony from an ancient kingdom, one that’s been lost and had gotten away from the wayward hands of man.
In “Use Somebody”, Caleb Followill (King of Leon’s main man), belches out and self-promotes with an insistent voice so steep that even if I could not use a man right now, I feel like wanting to be in Tennessee any minute now and see if I could actually “use somebody like him”.
He sings “I’ve been roaming around, I was looking down at all I see, painting faces, building places I can’t reach” and that is just like in Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia”, evoking melancholy in narrow streets, across a cacophony of nuances, of desertion and yearning and along sad highways.
Who’s using who? It is as real a question as could possibly be, because more often than not, a man is either being used by somebody or is using somebody—- depending on what end each of us would find ourselves in. Such and such things.
In the end, Followill keeps on belching “somebody like me”, over and over again, seeking attention and affirmation, like a crying child; and that’s where the music becomes glorious in its melancholy, to the point of being salvific.
Overall, the album is such a fresh release, imbibing a rock renewal that brings forth the spirit that had carried rock music to the extremes in the 1980’s, along the path of New Wave and Glam Rock, and mostly to the he no-frills southern tinged work from such legends as Bruce Springsteen and John Mellencamp. You could say, it’s very eclectic this way; but that is just so fine with me.
RATING: 7 out of 10.
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