Only By The Night

About

<i>Only by the Night</i> marked the moment where it all blew up big for Kings of Leon. Everything about the Followill clan’s fourth album was supersized—its sale, its sound, its ambition—and in its wake, brothers Caleb, Jared, and Nathan and cousin Matthew became one of the biggest bands in the world. It had been coming. The Nashville quartet’s first two album, 2003’s <i>Youth and Young Manhood</i> and 2004’s <i>Aha Shake Heartbreak</i>, had them pegged as the “Southern Strokes” with their frenetic, honky-tonk garage rock. But they’d begun to retool their sound with 2007’s <i>Because of the Times</i>, moving away from the barbed rock ’n’ roll of their early work and introducing a more widescreen and epic template to draw from. On <i>Only by the Night</i>, they set out to perfect that expansive approach at the same time as honing their anthemic hook. That seed that had been planted during support tours with U2 (in 2005) and Pearl Jam (2006): The band had plenty of songs in their arsenal that could pinball around sweatbox venues but, standing onstage inside huge arenas every night, they realized they needed to start writing songs that were big and powerful enough to have the punters in Row Z up on their feet. The sense of horizons being stretched runs right through <i>Only by the Night</i>, from sprawling, loose-limbed opener “Closer” to the thunderou, rolling drama of “Be Somebody,” from the bruised Americana of “Revelry” to the breezy, soulful groove of “I Want You.” And as for the sing-alongs to hit Row Z? They were right next to each other as tracks three and four, a pair of songs that would become Kings of Leon classic. Propulsive rocker “Sex On Fire” tapped into the heady rush that made their breakthrough songs so exciting—but now the urgency was paired with an indelible, irresistible chorus that could be hollered back at them. The album’s first single, it was <i>everywhere</i>, blaring out of passing car, on the radio, playing in shopping mall, on Victoria’s Secret runway, in the air. “Use Somebody,” meanwhile, was a different sort of Kings of Leon, a lighter-waving anthem that sounded slick and grown-up but vulnerable at the same time, an intimate ballad that could also connect with the masse. This was festival headliner material. .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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