By Samantha Nwaoshai
When it comes to music its basically location, location, location. In Rap and Hip Hop, it’s East Coast vs. West Coast. With rock it is the same thing. Instead of East Coast/West Coast, it’s the North vs. the South, it has been that way since, well, forever. Rock music in New York is not the same as rock music in the South. It’s like saying The Velvet Underground is even on the same plane as Lynyrd Skynyrd. It’s musical sacrilege. They are nothing alike, are completely unrelated, and the two should never ever meet. However the aforementioned silent rule of music is now currently under review thanks to Kings of Leon and their sophomore effort Aha Shake Heartbreak.
Aha Shake Heartbreak is meant to appeal to the hipsters in New York, but sounds like something you would find in a honky-tonk in Nashville, where they are from. You can’t get any more southern then being from Nashville, but the fact that they are on the same bloodline as Leon Followill (yes the evangelist) just makes them that much more southern-fried. Don’t think that they are preaching the gospel of the good book, unless to you the good book is about one night stands and partying under the influence of moonshine.
With lyrics like “You with your switchblade posse / I’ll get my guns from the South / We’ll take to the yard like a cockfight,” from “Four Kicks,” you know Leon Followill will be itching to whup their narrow behinds.
However, the album is not all cocky-swamp-music. Tracks like “Milk” and “Day Old Blues” bring the album to this human place, where the emotion is palpable as the music fills the room. The lyrics to “Day Old Blues,” “Low and behold things are killing me / Silly expectation of a dream / Girls are gonna love the way toss my hair / Boys are gonna hate the way I seem” are a good example of this. So they have depth.
Overall the album as a whole can accomplish the goal of bringing the honky-tonk to the hipster, especially now that there is an audience for it thanks to White Stripes front man Jack White and his work with country-veteran Loretta Lynn. This is Alt-country that does not make you cringe while listening to it and is worth having. However, since this is an RCA release that means that this is protected music, in other words the songs can’t go on your iPod, which totally blows.