Kings Of Leon
Can We Please Have Fun LOVETAP/CAPITOL
Let the subtly melodic, sporadically explosive and pleasingly edgy times roll.
Fun, you say? In these times of war, famine, economic strife and queues in pubs for seven-quid pints, Nashville’s space-country glowerers Kings Of Leon make for unlikely Michael McIntyres. But while we’re unlikely to find them doing 10k runs dressed as sideboards or being interviewed by Little Ant &Dec to promote this ninth album, they have emerged from the weighty musings of 2021’s When You See Yourself – wildfires, marital fracture, addiction, anxious youth – cautiously coated in silver lining.
‘There’s a war outside, we should all get high,’ Caleb Followill recommends as the cosmic funk groove of Nowhere to Run kicks in. Later, images of ‘panic on the streets’ are couched in the vital and excitable tones of early 00s riot-rock on Nothing to Do. It’s misleading to suggest that Followill is in ebullient and optimistic mood here; these are songs of confusion, bewilderment and anxiety. But as abstract hints of falling bombs, civil unrest and ecological collapse are peppered around songs titled Ballerina Radio and Rainbow Ball, alongside moments of youthful nostalgia and romantic security, there’s a distinct sense that life, love – and occasional lark – must go on amid the chaos.
KOL certainly sound as though they’re having fun with their recent future-rock incarnation. Since Markus Dravs updated their sound on 2016’s Walls they’ve developed textural kinships to Tame Impala, The National and Death Cab for Cutie. Now, with Harry Styles producer Kid Harpoon adding a confident mainstream glint, they settle into such sonics, unshowy and under no pressure to over-press their modernity. It’s an approach that allows the amorphous, motorik and Foals-y tones of Ballerina Radio and Rainbow Ball (and later the euphoric sludge rock of Seen) to service subtly crafted pop melodies which might not be the band’s most direct but are certainly among their most infectious growers. And it lets the album’s real canyon bawlers – Mustang, Nothing To Do, MTelevision, the gloriously strident Hesitation Generation recalling their early passion – leap from the mix.
There’s also plenty of playfulness on display. Actual Daydream alternates between surf flamenco Costello verses, and choruses akin to a mariachi Fleetwood Mac. Alt. country ballad Don’t Stop The Bleeding drifts along sweetly on crackling antique beats. The beautiful Split Screen revisits an emotional late-night video call, awash with suitably hypnagogic atmospherics. Bossa nova hula ballad Ease Me On sips its pina colada in an inflatable pineapple ring floating not too far from Mac DeMarco. It’s no surprise party – and less giant leap than consolidatory glide – but Can We Please Have Fun has its fair share of high times.
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Mark Beaumont
Neil Young & Crazy Horse
Fu##in’ Up REPRISE
Shakey adds yet more Ragged edge to former Glory.
Recorded live in 2023, Fu##in’ Up finds Young and co. performing their classic 1990 album Ragged Glory almost in its entirety. When first released, that album solidified Young’s newfound reputation as the Godfather of Grunge. This gloriously loud and distorted rendition does nothing to dispute that sobriquet.
The songs have been re-titled, presumably to drive home the point that old songs can exist anew – they’re familiar, but different. Young and Crazy Horse never perform their songs in quite the same way each night, of course, and Fu##in’ Up exemplifies that spontaneous, exploratory spirit. Listening to these geezers whipping up a hurricane of monolithic thud and skronk is always irresistible. The climactic 15-minute version of Chance On Love (Love And Only Love) is a particularly gargantuan thrill.
This latest chapter in Young’s investigative journey through his vast back catalogue is no mere exercise in nostalgia, it sounds absolutely vital.
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Paul Whitelaw
Kim Gordon
The Collective MATADOR
Sonic Youther’s second solo record brings fun along with the noise.
Kim Gordon has been making music for a very long time. The first Sonic Youth records came out more than 40 years ago, and since then she has worked with everyone from Glenn Branca to Yoko Ono. And yet, surprisingly, this album is only Gordon’s second solo release, following lukewarm on the heels of her 2019 debut No Home Record, to which this album is unarguably a follow-up.
As with No Home Record, The Collective was produced by Justin Raisen (Charlie XCX, John Cale, Yeah Yeah Yeahs) and is a well-knitted-together combination of Raisen’s jittery beat and Gordon’s vocals. But while Gordon’s debut was impressionistic, splintered and languid, The Collective seems looser, noisier and, on tracks like I’m A Man, funnier. It’s a very New York record, it’s an energetic record, and while the older listener would enjoy some guitar playing from Gordon – that sort of thing seems to be supplied by Raisen and engineer Anthony Paul Lopez – it’s her attitude, not the glitchy beats, that really gives The Collective its aggression and fun.
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David Quantick
Lee Aaron
Tattoo Me NUCLEAR BLAST
Canada’s Metal Queen doesn’t quite cover her bases.
Forty years ago, Lee Aaron was making her bid as the Metal Queen. While the throne might ultimately have gone to another, the Canadian singer contented herself by reinventing herself through the prism of jazz and even opera. Having returned to rock with 2016’s Fire And Gasoline, Tattoo Me, album number 18, sees Aaron pick songs from across the rock canon to lend her dusky tones to.
Covering everyone from Nina Simone to Jet, Elastica and Alice Cooper, Tattoo Me plays out like a covers band trialling material in a dive bar. The album’s best moments are undoubtedly when Aaron flexes her hipswinging rock chops, with relatively obscure cuts like The 77’s Tattoo and Heart’s Even It Up benefitting from her swagger. There are swings and misses, however; Are You Gonna Be My Girl is overly ploddy, and Is It My Body feels threadbare, making the album a patchy listen with shining moments.
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Rich Hobson
TSOL
A-Side Graffiti KITTEN ROBOT
Originals and well-chosen covers make up a winning hand.
Legendary Los Angeles skatepunks TSOL have been going, on and off in various versions, since 1978, which is a remarkable achievement in itself. The fact that they continue being any good is even more remarkable. Perhaps the trick is to take breaks from time to time – this is their first album since 2017’s The Trigger Complex – or just to never give up. Either way, A-Side Graffiti, a brand new collection of new songs and covers, is excellent. From fierce originals like Swimming and Nothing’s Ever
Right, which are anthemic in away most 90s pop-punk never could be, to spectacularly wellchosen covers – a dark, rewritten What A Wonderful World, a Bowie-faithful Can You Hear Me? and, best of all, a spoton remake of Magazine’s Rhythm Of Cruelty – this is a loud, powerful and exciting album.
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David Quantick
The Chuck Norris Experiment
20 GHOST HIGHWAY
Boy, those decades went by quickly.
If you’re wondering, a ‘Chuck Norris experiment’ is when you goad an 80-year-old man wearing Wrangler jeans and rambling about Jesus and America to kick you in the teeth. It’s no mean feat to create the aural equivalent, but TCNE have been delivering that glorious, bone-breaking crunch for (you guessed it) 20 years now.
These hard-charging Swedes pull out all the stops for this anniversary album, delivering an all-hands-on-deck bevy of scorchers in their trademark action-glam style. Witness, for example, the hard-partying You Go Boom, an absolutely ruthless foot stomper that sounds like Danko Jones fronting Skid Row. Surprise (And Everybody Dies) is an epic tambourine shaker. There’s a killer Zodiac Mindwarp cover (Prime Mover), and then there’s Bats, which somehow turns the 1966 Batman theme into an excessive riff orgy. And so on.
This album will leave you sweat-soaked and hungry for another couple of decades’ worth of maximum rock’n’roll.
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Sleazegrinder
Chris Shiflett
Starry Nights & Campfire Lights SNAKEFARM
Moonlighting Foo Fighter covers Thin Lizzy and Hanoi Rocks on stopgap EP.
Chris Shiflett’s country-music bonafides are in no doubt by now. The Foo Fighters guitarist has carved out a kerr-twangin’ parallel solo career that has seen him living out his honky-tonk dreams, like Willie or Waylon if they’d been raised on The Replacements.
The big draws on this seventrack digital EP – released just six months after his last album, 2023’s Lost At Sea –are the countrified covers of Thin Lizzy’s outlaw classic Cowboy Song and Hanoi Rocks’ classic brokenhearts-’n’-smashed-bottles ballad Don’t You Ever Leave Me. The former has the whiff of a line-dancing night, the latter features some sweet slide guitar and an ill-advised attempt to replicate Mike Monroe’s spokenword part. Both are heartfelt, if inessential – something that could be said about the five live Lost At Sea songs that bulk out the EP.
Wille and Waylon would approve, even if they wouldn’t lose any sleep over it.
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Dave Everley
Desperate Measures
Sublime Destruction CADIZ
Early-80s New Zealand punk band reanimated in early-20s South London.
Once invited to kiss the papal punk ring of Joe Strummer himself when they played at a Clash gig aftershow in New Zealand, Desperate Measures have been resurrected 40-odd years later by sole remaining original member Eugene Butcher, with anew line-up of unlikely London lads bolted on. They may look like a crew of binmen, but DM are genre aficionados: they know the punk-rock story inside out and back to front. Meaning you get some impressive Stooges-influenced craftmanship (theand the intimidating dark menace of Psychedelic Furs with a hint of Leatherface (the
