KOL in german music mag

[brigitte]

finally a first article in a german music mag (the others are still writing about bloc party and kaiser chiefs)
here´s the KOL stuff from Musikexpress (i´m gonna translate it as good as i can as soon as possible)
the article (including an interview with nathan)


please note the text in the pic says "this is how a rocker from the southern states has to look like: matthew followill"


the album review (they got five out of six stars which means "very good"). the text in the pic says "how stops smoking minimizes the risk of stupid faces"


an ad for their german gigs

[bondoo6]

thank you brigitte, that was cool

[buck]

Hey if you need help translating it, let me know! I know a bit of German and Calebbian. I might be able to help.

[brigitte]

thanks buck!
if you don´t mind i´m gonna pm it to you when i´m ready to check it

[buck]

I don't mind at all!

[m1a1]

thnx brigitte

[brigitte]

we (this means buck and i) have finished the translation of the review (the article is coming soon). so here you go:

Round and tight
Kings Of Leon
Because Of The Times

The Followill brothers beat themselves: Multi faceted 80´s-US-Indie-Rock, sometimes feverishly hot, sometimes sluggishly muggy.

The 80´s have spawned many great US-rock bands: Some had a big influence on the following rock generations, some serve more seldom as commercially successful templates. On BECAUSE OF THE TIMES the Sympathieträger Kings of Leon grab even deeper into the treasure chest of references than they already did on AHA SHAKE HEARTBREAK. Next to the always immanent gospel references and trips back to robust 70´s rock, the longhaired family clan has included few with which the golden 80´s have shined aside of the mainstream. For example there is the mugginess of Green On Red´ish desert rock in the unusually long “Knocked Up”, which opens the record like a promise. With “Charmer” and “On Call” the bass intro and daft shrieks of Caleb Followill makes you think of the Pixies. In ”McFearless” and “My Party” on the other hand there is a playful firehose liveliness, and generally very often a pretty hardcore scattering in the style of SST Bands are included. With “Black Thumbnail” it goes back to the 70´s for a short while: Here´s the latent aggro feeling of a biker club with too much beer under the hot sun of a Confederate hicktown in the air. Then there’s reggae meets gospel in “Ragoo”, in between a lullaby in waltz time and by the end a bit of unspectacular strumming. Everything is sketchily arranged as usual, but the constant raw sound welds the record together to a round, tight piece. And Caleb is a singer who always stands out with his fantastic raspy voice and whines, moans and swears to the limits of his vocal range. The songs, which were mixed at the old Abbey-Road mixer of the Beatles, were brought in live throughout and therefore sound very authentic, as if they were recorded on a sticky, drunk evening on the veranda. Apart from partly amusing choirs, which make you think the first albums of the Flaming Lips were resurrected, there are no big sound gadgetries. Despite big tours with U2, Pearl Jam and Bob Dylan, the Kings Of Leon don’t make you feel like you have to fear the station rock likeness of bands à la The Killers who became famous too fast. Also on this album the Followills sound as if you could stumble into some small US-club where you can see those four longhaired guys play on the stage. Hopefully it remains like this for a while.

Allied stuff (Artverwandtes): CCR: Pendulum (1970) – Meat Puppets: Huevo (1987) – The Flaming Lips: Telepathic Surgery (1989) – Thermals: Fuckin A (2004)

[buck]

There's half a sentence in there that I just couldn't figure out, so I just let it be. See if you can guess what it is. lololol I'm still not sure exactly what the writer was trying to say.

Also... For folks who like language, I don't think there's an exact translation for the word "Sympathieträger." It means... kinda... a well-liked, popular figure. Kinda like the word "schadenfreude." There's no English word that's equivalent.

[antroolez]

whats this half a sentence?

doesn't immer mit der Ruhe mean always with the times?

[antroolez]

and that caption....matthew followill?

tut tut

[antroolez]

o rite the Sympathieträger bit?

yea probs means like a trend-setter maybe? something like that...trage means to wear, right?

[brigitte]

antroolez said:

doesn't immer mit der Ruhe mean always with the times?

only if you translate it word by word, which you shouldn´t do cos "immer mit der Ruhe" is a saying which means that you shouldn´t hesitate, that you should take your time, so i think "take it slow" might be a suitable translation

[buck]

antroolez said:

whats this half a sentence?

You didn't see it? It flows bad cuz I couldn't figure it out:

"the longhaired family clan has included few with which the golden 80´s have shined aside of the mainstream."



And that's pretty much what I gotta outta the German, but I was hot and tired last night. lololol

[brigitte]

buck said:

"the longhaired family clan has included few with which the golden 80´s have shined aside of the mainstream."

i think what the author wanted to say is that there are influences of some good, not mainstream, 80´s stuff


here´s the article:

TAKE IT SLOW

Following Europe, the Kings Of Leon have now finally conquered the USA. However, the take-off doesn’t come naturally to these new farm owners.

“Any spare tickets for Kings Of Leon?” At the end of the escalator, subway station Tottenham Court Road, you already get a little taste of what will happen tonight just a few meters away at the London Astoria. Well, in preparation for the awards show, there are one and a half weeks of NME Award Shows at the end of February, and there’s a general feeling of anticipation in the city. The concerts of Maximo Park, Klaxons and We Are Scientists at the 3000 capacity Arena are sold out (and you have to ask yourself inevitably what the young escalator man would have paid for a ticket). The free subway papers hype a fight between Arctic Monkeys and Kaiser Chiefs and speculate about extra security measures during the shows; in the end, they expect that the bands will answer each other’s snide comments with violence. You can see a one-hour award special on Channel 4 in which Jarvis Cocker takes a few whimsical minutes to say how good he thinks it is that at least someone from Sheffield is bringing in some well-deserved success. And the Kings Of Leon, even though they disappeared from the (European) scene for almost two years, are part of all this turbulence. A little bit surprising. Eventually, their relatively traditional – which likens back to their roots in the South of the USA - variety of modern garage rock never did reach the big audiences despite critics’ praise. But here, on this evening, the brothers Caleb, Jared, Nathan and their cousin Matthew Followill are really indisputable superstars.

When the four start the show with “Black Thumbnail” off the new album BECAUSE OF THE TIMES there’s unlimited enthusiasm. Which grows into euphoria as drummer Nathan announces “Taper Jean Girl” with some hits on his hi-hat. Undreamt-of tumults in the audience, and in the big grandstand people sing along loudly. And even there in somewhat safe distance you'll get knocked for a loop by the incredible presence of the Followills, though the band hardly shows any physical emotions. Singer Caleb stands there rather unaffected, thanks the audience a few times. Nathan chews chewing gum casually. You can hardly see guitarist Matthew, who always stares at the floor with his face hidden by his long mane. Only bassist Jared obviously has fun. Is this literally the down to earth behaviour of the American south or just the certainty of having the audience in your hand? Later in the interview Nathan at least admits that they were a little bit “surprised”: “The audience in London was always fantastic, each show there was absolutely crazy. We had expected something like this, but after we hadn't been there for two years we somehow forgot how crazy the audience there can be.” As a matter of fact: though their set was peppered with songs from the new album the evening turned into a victorious away game. During the dark bluesrocker “Trani”, the last song before the encore, something stirs: In rage, Caleb throws his microphone stand on the floor.

The current album BECAUSE OF THE TIMES was finished almost a year ago and was tested copiously in 2006 as the support act for Pearl Jam and Bob Dylan. The mere endless tours started already a year ago as U2´s support act. While the first shows together laboured along a bit — Nathan reported they “sold seven t-shirts” during two shows in San Diego — the tour finally became a success. U2 took the band under their wings and encouraged fans to come early to see the support act. Nathan: ”The audience was great, when you think what kind of people had been there. Of course they were there to see U2. But there are so many U2 fans who go to each show that after half the tour, there were people who wanted to hear us because they had seen us 10 times at this point and they slowly started to like us.” Success is the result of hard work, this credo always applied to the Kings Of Leon. The endless tour dates had the desired effect: The saying of the prophet – and this alludes to the Followill brothers’ origin in the household of a travelling preacher –, he who doesn’t apply in his own Land doesn’t count. Also in their homeland they have earned success, after struggles with the press, conservative radio and MTV. “The reactions in the USA are not as crazy as in Europe or Great Britain but ten times better than before,” notices Nathan. “You know, we’re happy that it took a while to become big in America. If we would have been successful at one fell swoop it might have caused problems. I mean we can see this in bands who started with us, who partly had huge success at the beginning and now you don’t hear from them anymore. We are here, have just finished our third album and everybody loves it. In this respect the support slots had been another incentive for the family clan of Nashville. Not only U2, but also Eddie Vedder and Bob Dylan, who usually aren’t known for being overly warm-hearted, had been more than taken with this band; the latter called the already mentioned “Trani” a “super song”. “The fact that we’re such a young band and that people like Bono, Eddie Vedder and even Bob Dylan appreciate our music and respect us as musicians is unbelievable” Nathan says proudly. “I think we remind those guys of when they were as old as we are now. It’s a bit like they want to protect us, help us to avoid doing things they did but would have liked to avoid. But most of all they have given us this: Always keep your own head. Never get bigger than the music. And don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by the success”.

If superstar status would be measured by these criteria the Kings Of Leon would have reached the goal a long ago. BECAUSE OF THE TIMES clearly shows the band’s own, even headstrong head. On a different note the choice of “On Call” as a single (a blues song, in which Caleb seems more of the lonesome penitent in the desert than the glamorous rock`n´roller) is hard to explain. But fluffy single hits aren’t an issue anyway: BECAUSE OF THE TIMES is dirty, loud and contemplative. And a “bit melancholic” as Nathan thinks. “Of course we have our rockers, which all the fans will instantly recognize as our songs, which are fun and make the people dance. But you know, we wanted to get out of this corner, wanted to go beyond the two and a half minutes songs. Of course we could have done a third album full of songs like “Molly’s Chambers” and “The Bucket”, I’m sure people would have loved it. But we wouldn’t have liked it, because we always want to grow. We knew exactly how this record should sound, and that’s the essential difference: It’s the first record the band has produced”. And to which the whole band has contributed: the rhythmically complex “McFearless”, the band’s nickname for “Jared”, around whose bass line the song was constructed. In addition, they became more mature; the easygoing listing of external influences, which coined the interviews of the last album, is passé. Only the Pixies influence on “Charmer” Nathan unwillingly admits, and that “seeing U2 live every night, did influence us a bit. We wanted a bigger sound too.”

The strong family company – in which the whole kinship seems to be involved – saves the Kings Of Leon from getting bigger than the music. The first people who were allowed to listen to the finished album have been about 150 Followills, who meet every year at a family reunion for several days lasting in a hicktown in Oklahoma. In the evening at the fireside, traditionally gospel-, country- and blues-songs were sung, but last year they had a CD-player standing there. “We haven’t been there for a while, had finished the recordings and wanted to make our family a special present. They should be the first one’s to hear the album” Nathan explains the unusual test run. And the reactions? “Man, they loved it. I mean they also know our other two albums. So we had accustomed them slowly to our sound. But this record is a bit more melodic, I think they liked it a bit more because the songs are easier to relate to.” You could argue that the band is turning again and again to its roots. Whereby, we are at the last superstar formula for success: the Followills don’t let themselves get overwhelmed by the success. Meanwhile their down-to-earth attitude became physically tangible. Nathan and Caleb have bought themselves a farm. Now songs are written on the porch and rehearsed in the garage 45 minutes away from Nashville. “We just wanted a bit of a privacy, a place where we can rehearse and nobody disturbs us,” explains Nathan. Nobody ain't quite right. The American Rolling Stone reported about a neighbour who complained about the noise. Is the quarrel arranged now? “Yes”, Nathan says “we bought his farm two weeks ago. No more complaints.”