Country-fried southern rock has been making as much noise as Duane Allman's decrepit corpse as of late.
Beachwood Sparks once offered the most unfeigned perpetuation of Gram Parson's vision had he survived Joshua Tree but increased the intensity of his morphine-fueled haze.Lately, tough, the band has forsaken any grit or edge their drugged-out minds could muster for a painfully-sensitive, sleepy monotony. The summer's collaboration with usually stellar Jimmy Tamborello, "Make the Robots Cry," was sucked-dry of the glint that ignited psychedelic explosions of twangy glee like "Desert Skies" and "The Sun Surrounds Me." Taking the declination from its sparkling eponymous debut to its distant, detached sequel "Once We Were Trees" to the miserably dreary "Make the Robots Cry" as part of a career trajectory, initial hopes of the young Sparks ascending to lead southern rock in this millennium are as anemic as the SoCal stoners frail bodies.
But as disappointing as this may be, the Sparks never really had the swagger or soul innate in their true southern rock predecessors.The band cultivated a stronger connection to the sun-drenched mellowness of the Flying Burrito Brothers or Buffalo Springfield than to Lynard Skynard or the Allman Brothers Band.
Meanwhile, caught amongst the flock of strutting hippie posers and derivative 70s sycophants, the only band capable of tapping into this confidence and depth in recent years failed to attract an audience a fraction the size of charlatans like Chris Robinson or his defunct Black Crowes.Drive-By Truckers and its sprawling "Southern Rock Opera" absorbed decades of southern culture and music, but rather than simply regurgitating it, the band coalesced its influences to form a pastiche of nostalgia, social commentary and reverence wrapped in the full spectrum of southern rock.
Yet, even after widening its distribution last year, "Southern Rock Opera" hardly received credit or appreciation for its genius. The image of five middle-aged, heavyset men on stage must have paled when presented alternatively with oh-so-dreamy images of Julian and Fab.
Southern rock needs its Strokes -- its saviors -- someone who can wed Beachwood Sparks' young, alluring neo-hippie chicness with the ebullient Drive-By Truckers' pedigree to pull it out of its nesting dormancy and bring it back to popular relevancy.
And as if conjured in some hype laboratory located off the shores of Costa Rica just to answer this call, Kings of Leon has surfaced packing gleaming, near-perfect credentials and an RCA-backed debut EP, "Holy Roller Novocaine."
Kings of Leon touts its past like a badge of authentication. Worried these boys are just artificially packaged 70s revivalists?Well, the band's composed of three brothers and a cousin from Nashville who grew up traveling across the South with their Pentecostal evangelistfather -- and ya'll know you can't fake family chemistry. Doubting the legitimacy of its soul-drenched blues? Well, geez, these boys done learned how to play by performing gospel music in church like any good sons of a preacher man.
Why are these boys swept up in the eye of a hype maelstrom?Buzz accumulated when the band was signed by "the guy who discovered the Strokes," which logically led to NME wet dreams of a southern Strokes or Allman Brothers garage rock outfit.Oh, and unlike those poor Drive-By Truckers, boy, are these kids cute!None older than twenty-two; all draped in vintage denim and rock n' roll attire raided from the Flying Burrito Brothers' wardrobe; all sporting unkept mop-tops. The band even managed to secure the production of Ethan "Jon Brion of Alt Country" Johns, a collaborator more than a producer who notoriously gained his name overseeing Ryan Adam's commercial transformation from "Pneumonia" to the "48 Hours" sessions.
With hailed messiahs like the Datsuns and the Vines increasingly revealed as little more than smoke and mirror acts -- style triumphing over substance -- every expectation for the band seems another bullet placed in the chamber of propaganda Russian Roullet, just waiting to blow up in their faces.
But while "Holy Roller Novocaine" isn't "Live at Fillmore East" or even "Southern Rock Opera" by any means, but it still exudes enough beams of hope to sustain the hype.
From the menacing opening chords of "Molly's Chamber," Kings of Leon swagger through the EP's five songs with the cockiness Beachwood Sparks couldn't touch after three tries.Guitars jangle with a ringing looseness that threatens to turn into jams before Johns' production or Matthew Followill licks snap it back into line. Caleb Followill's twangy, drawling baritone sweet talks itself into the crevices of the band's grooves, flirting with a Chris Robinson delivery but spurning any of its histrionics, as his brothers unleash vocal harmonies eschewed by the garage scene.
"Wasted Time" combines Caleb's braggadocio with a bluesy electric-boogie that works itself into a convulsing fervor."Molly's Chamber" travels the opposite path with the band, complimenting Caleb's collectedness with a sinister, structured groove.A sunshiny pop melody glares in on "California Waiting" and the mood mellows further on the dispassionately lazy "Wicker Chair," the only song that falls prey to thewhiny southern rock conventions that plague most of their colleagues.
Caleb's songwriting similarly displays a slight tendency to give into southern rock cliches with its cryptic visions ("Holy Roller Novocaine") and quick-talking nonsensical coolness ("Wasted Time"), but the surprising earnestness of his delivery partially shields him from such criticism for the time being.
Kings of Leon are young, but make no mistake:this is hardly a collection of basement demos (see: "The Modern Age") -- these boys have the financinal support and buzz to cast their iron now.If carrying southern rock's future bore too much of a burden, "Holy Roller Novocaine" provides a make-shift pillar to help sustain the pressure until their full-length debut comes out this summer.
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