Release Date: October 19, 2010
Reviewed By Joesph Novak
A couple weeks ago, I was having trouble sleeping. The earthquake in Japan had just happened and people here in Honolulu were freaking out because a tsunami was coming our way. My hotel, literally feet from the beach, evacuated us all to higher floors as a safety measure, but I was still a bit worried.
What better time to take another stab at the new Kings of Leon album, Come Around Sundown, I thought. Turns out the album was the right answer, because it put me right to sleep. When I woke up, the tsunami was over and so was the album. Turns out, I wish the tsunami would have washed my iPod away so I didn’t have to listen to Come Around Sundown again.
Going in, I expected a rousing rock album like Only by the Night. What I got was an album of uninspired, play-it-safe, dentist office rock.
My friends and I coined the term called creep-suck a while back, when you think something is awesome at first, but as you find out more about it, you slowly begin to realize that it sucks.
This album epitomizes creep-suck. It opens up with a great rock tune. The End is full of bluster and the kind of hooks that we’d expect as a follow up to Only by the Night. After that tune, however, it seems like the Kings of Leon ran out of energy.
A lot of the songs, Back Down South and Pickup Truck, made it seem as if the band spent a night listening to the house band at the bar at the Memphis Airport Holiday Inn and decided to try their hand at Southern rock. Beach Side, which was probably the most boring track of an hour full of boring tracks, made me want to throw my iPod into the ocean.
By the end, even another rocker, No Money, can’t salvage this lackluster effort. If you’re still listening at that point, it’s only because you’ve long since checked out and it’s just become background noise. In other words, skip this one.
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