Track #2

If it seems as though I've given up on my project, fear not! I've just had an incredibly busy/yucky week-- busy in that I started going to free classes at a local recording studio, and yucky in that I've been sick since Wednesday. It hasn't been one of those "skip school and screw around at home" types of illnesses. It's been more along the lines of me passed out on the couch, exhausting my DVR while coughing up both my lungs into a bowl. So yeah, this week's been a blast.

I am back now, giving my blog a hearty hello (although I don't get anything in return because nobody ever leaves me any pretty comments) and continuing what I said I'd do. So now, I post the second track off Youth and Young Manhood, titled Happy Alone, in Youtube form.






It's a swell video. Shot in a studio in London, in 2003, when the boys were still grungy, young and manic, this high quality video gives a glimpse of the boys when they were unknown nobodies, just starting out on the road. In fact this era of Kings of Leon is still relatively unknown to those individuals who only know them by "Sex on Fire" and "Use Somebody." Sure, now the boys are becoming megastars, and though anyone listening to the Top 40 could claim to be familiar with KOL, it doesn't mean they remember where it all started.

The Kings began in Nashville, with Caleb and Nathan, who had moved away from their preacher father and were trying to make it with music. They had to call up their sixteen year old brother Jared and the not-much-older cousin Matthew to help out, but in making it, they succeeded. And then the boys started making the nasty rebellious country-rock that dominated Youth and Young Manhood.

Happy Alone fits right in at spot number two. It's got that chugging groove and the sleazy lyrics and the rawness of a band that's just come together (they really just had; I believe a few instruments had to be studied and learned before the band really took off). It alerts the listener that the sexiness/borderline raunchiness isn't going to disappear and that a testosterone tsunami is going to be unleashed in the next nine tracks (if you count Caleb singing about dancing around in high heels and cherry-red lipstick as manly). Regardless, it sure brings on a load of excitement.

Give this track a listen. It embodies the spirit of KOL back when, before all the fans who originally purchased this album and listened to this song 806 times began whining about Only By the Night. We get it. They sound different now. But I dare you to listen to Revelry, Manhattan and especially Cold Desert, and argue with me that these aren't gorgeous, chilled-out southern-rock grooves Caleb wails to in that drawl of his (and I say especially Cold Desert, because that must be the saddest, chillest, wailing, lazy groove). What am I getting at, you ask? Shush and appreciate, please. I love these fellas.