Yahoo! Music Review

Released on 02/04/07
Label: Columbia Records

For a band whose look and sound are firmly rooted in the 1970s, Kings Of Leon are highly adept at swerving clichés. Take 'difficult second album syndrome', for example. Barely a week goes by without some garlanded indie types releasing a dull second record - this week, it's Maximo Park's turn - yet Kings Of Leon's "Aha Shake Heartbreak", released in 2004, was a shining beacon: a sophomore effort that both deepened the band's sound and gave freer reign to Caleb Followill's feverish imagination. Admittedly it wasn't as zippy an affair as debut "Youth And Young Manhood", but repeated listens brought greater rewards.

Plainly, the three brothers Followill and their cousin Jared enjoyed toying with our expectations. On this, their third LP, it takes them seven minutes to squirm free of the "southern Strokes" pigeonhole and completely obliterate every expectation anyone could have of them. Seven minutes is the duration of opening track "Knocked Up", which marries an echoing guitar figure and pitter-patter rhythms to a tale of love enduring through unexpected pregnancy and parental disapproval. When it finishes, you're compelled to simply cue it back up again, and for a while it seems "Because Of The Times" might present the same problem as the Pixies' "Doolittle" or The Beta Band's "Three EPs": how do you get past that stunning first track?

Did someone mention the Pixies? The second song here, "Charmer", is a comically blatant homage to Black Francis' lot - not a band you'd ever presume to float in the same orbit - and it's a real guilty pleasure. It's followed by lead single "On Call", a song that's simultaneously sad, haunting and powerfully uplifting. When that gives way to the fizzing rock of "McFearless" and then the ringing guitars and storm-the-barricades chorus of "Black Thumbnail", it seems we've got a modern classic on our hands.

However, though gems lurk therein, the second half of this album doesn't quite match the momentum of the first. After "My Party", "True Love Way" and "Ragoo" show off the band's burgeoning flair for experimentation - fruitfully delving into psychedelia, straight pop and reggae, even - there's a run of three tracks of a more conventional stripe. "Fans", "The Runner" and "Trunk" are gently-paced, mournful pop-rock songs that succeed on their own terms but lack the surging emotions and kinetic energy to be found elsewhere. Omitting these three might have rendered "Because Of The Times" an essentially perfect 10-track LP rather than a merely excellent 13-track one. Then again, it's all iPod playlists these days, isn't it?

In any case, there's at least a pleasant lull before the juggernaut that is "Camaro" comes roaring into town. As a blazing song in which Caleb Followill sublimates giddy lust in admiration for a woman's convertible coupe, "Camaro" confirms the singer's eccentricity and libido to be in equally fine fettle. For their final trick, Kings Of Leon conjure the sun-blasted classic rock of "Arizona", rounding off an album of awesome variety, depth and imagination. The need for rock'n'roll bands to declare war on clichés has been evident for ages. But who'd have thought a band in tight jeans and sunglasses would wind up leading the charge?

    by Niall O'Keeffe