Dimmers on the lights and filtered air

Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts

17/05/24 : Can We Please Have Fun - Kings Of Leon

I'm not their biggest fan but I don't mind Kings Of Leon, so I'm happy to listen to this - I do not, however, like the lack of a question mark.  Un-acc-ept-able!

I liked the opening track "Ballerina Radio" - it felt like a cross between U2 and Radiohead which worked well for me.  And that vibe continues - I thought it had a real Achtung Baby kinda vibe going on, but with the trademark Kings Of Leon vocal style turned down a bit which is an improvement for me.  They do revert to a more classic KoL sound towards the end of the album which I didn’t dig so much, but I’ll let them off because I’m nice that way.  I can also report that it sounds good in the car with the windows down - an important test metric, I think you'll agree.

We're at #2 in the charts with a new entry this week and the rest of the top five are Taylor Swift, Dua Lipa, Gunna (another new entry) and The Weeknd best-of.  There are no more new entries in the top ten, but there's an interesting re-entry for Keane (#7) - I suspect that their 20th anniversary tour for the album may have had some impact here.  The next highest new entries are Bugzy Malone (#13) and M Huncho & Potter Payper (#28) both of which I'm fine without checking them out, but I was a bit more intrigued by Gabrielle (#30 - sounds exactly like you'd expect and that's no bad thing) and Villagers (#82 - good if you like that indie medium-fi kinda thang).

Last week I confidently stated that Dua would drop to #13 and we've already seen how wrong I was there, so let's go for #13 again for KoL and this week's Taylor stats are one in the top ten, four in the top forty and eight in the entire chart (but three are in the 90s - next week could be a shocker for the lass).

Wikipedia tells us this is their ninth album and it was produced by Kid Harpoon - and I was astonished to find out that's not his real name (he also produced Harry Styles's Harry's House).  The critics have been nice enough about the album and it's done well commercially - #2 in Ireland, #3 in New Zealand and #4 in Germany.

"Customers also listened to" Pearl Jam, The Black Keys, Cage The Elephant and Vampire Weekend - it seems strange that I've never heard of Cage The Elephant when they've been going for 15 years and they're based over here.  I've obviously heard of Kings Of Leon though and I've always been a bit "take it or leave it" about them, but I really quite liked this.

10/05/24 - It's no Future Nostalgia
24/05/24 - Better on a second listen

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