Kings of Leon reached double figures in their album count with the release of O My Beloved.
The 13-track release features a hard sonic pivot toward sparse, acoustic-led tunes that break from the group’s stadium-filling rock era. If it weren’t for Caleb Followill’s distinctive mid-register Tennessee drawl, a listener might mistake the songs for coming from an entirely different band.
This deliberate shift brings to mind similar shrewd changes of direction undertaken by the group’s peers during the 2020s, including Mumford & Sons’ record earlier in the year and the Killers’ Americana-driven turn on 2020’s Imploding the Mirage. Despite the ebbs and flows of modern rock over the last decade and a half, the band has remained enormously successful, making this unexpected maturity an entity to ignore at your own risk.
I’ll spend the rest of my days on my own Our new album, O My Beloved, comes out Nov 6th. Pre-order in bio pic.twitter.com/okow29jkCv
The album’s hometown setting informs songs that are deliberately downbeat rather than focused on selling albums or filling arenas.
We have already surpassed anything we ever imagined we could do, and we’ve built something that is so special. I thought, wouldn’t it be beautiful to make an album that is looking back on all of the things that we’ve done and appreciating how we got here,
Caleb Followill
The singer noted that the tracks brought forward memories that initially seemed minor.
In the songs, there’s our families, stories from our childhood, things that maybe didn’t seem that significant at the time, but the way they find their way into these songs kind of lets me realize how impactful they really were in my life.
Caleb Followill
Not every moment maintains the same sparse momentum. The plodding “Warm Company” can feel dirge-like compared to its surroundings, while the chorus of Blue Jeans and Diamonds
features a cresting, “Use Somebody”-esque quality that somewhat undermines its own orchestral tenderness by invoking the band’s late-2000s sound.
Even so, old habits die hard, leaving room to afford the Followills grace during the album’s lower points.
The release functions as a reset for a career spanning multiple distinct eras: the innocent indie-sleaze of Youth & Young Manhood (2003), Aha Shake Heartbreak (2004), and Because of the Times (2007); the stadium-filling rock behemoth Only by the Night (2008), Come Around Sundown (2010), and Mechanical Bull (2013); and the comfortable pop-rock of WALLS (2016), When You See Yourself (2021), and Can We Please Have Fun (2024).
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Do you like your name? Our new album, O My Beloved, comes out Nov 6th. Pre-order in bio pic.twitter.com/gvoREwT2f4
2 days Our new album, O My Beloved, comes out Nov 6th. Pre-order in bio pic.twitter.com/sDAWJoEOhT
Preorder the digital version of O My Beloved exclusively in the online store and be the first to hear the new song “The Hand” before the album releases this Friday, November 6. A limited number of alt cover deluxe denim sparkle vinyl, including a hand signed insert from the band… pic.twitter.com/MaVacEZd4p