ONLY BY THE NIGHT - Kings Of Leon

LAST year, Entertainment Weekly called the Kings Of Leon's third album Because Of The Times its "crowning glory" while Rolling Stone wondered: "How good can the Kings Of Leon get? They've already gone further than anybody could have guessed".

But if critics thought that the album was the work of a band -
comprising the Followills, brothers Caleb (vocals and guitar), Nathan (drums) and Jared (bass), and their cousin Matthew (guitar) - at the peak of its powers, they might want to reconsider after listening to its latest release, Only By The Night, which picks up where Because Of The Times left off.

"To me, it sounds like the Kings Of Leon are back, not only as a band,
but as friends," said Caleb.

"It was really a big family vibe. That's where the title came from. It's also a reference to a poem by Edgar Allan Poe, and it has five syllables, like all of our album titles."

From the first bars of opener Closer, which Caleb says is about a lovesick vampire, with its gently weeping guitars and reverberating drums, you can hear the space that Nashville producers Angelo Petraglia and Jacquire King have opened up in the Followills' sound.

The fuzz-crunched, hip-grinding Crawl, about relationships of all kinds and taking them for granted, blasts in with metallic thrum, sweeping in its savage grace.

The album's single, Sex On Fire, returns the band to familiar thematic territory of unbridled lust.

Then, another quick shift of gears into Use Somebody, a rousing, full-throated indie anthem, with Caleb sing-shouts Otis Redding-style: "You know that I could use somebody".

The dopey Manhattan is partly about dancing and enjoying life and partly about the struggles of Native Americans.

"Manhattan is actually a native American word that means `island of many hills'," said Caleb, whose family has Native American blood.

Finally there's the driving, forceful Notion, where the singer pushes back against anyone who says anything against anyone in his band.

The album closes with dreamy Cold Desert, about a man at the end of his rope who picks himself back up. It's the perfect maudlin end to this short, sharp album.

Only By The Night is an album not to be missed by rock fans, if only because the band has made rock fashionable again. - NST 09/11/2008