Kings of Leon – Can We Please Have Fun Review

Can we, indeed? Kings of Leon feel their way through the rough expectations of a rock band whose glory days were around the time Foo Fighters were bubbling to the surface. Holding this sort of form and staying in the vicious, relevant sphere is a rarity. Can We Please Have Fun is a surprise risk from the Nashville-formed band for they decide to change the tone of their work. There is an independent edge to it which the likes of Mustang explored as they crack through the open road and hope to experience the glory days of freewheeling, wind-in-your-hair excitement. This shock earnestness is not lost on their latest studio offering even if the image overhaul is a tad too obvious. While they look for new horizons there is a sense of familiarity to the core of these tracks.  

Kings of Leon thread the needle well on their ninth album. Not to compare them with fellow image revival piece Kaiser Chiefs but at least one had earnest intents while the other chased TikTok clicks with Nile Rodgers. Can We Please Have Fun is desperate and clawing as it looks to engage the lighter charms of a darkening planet. Opener Ballerina Radio has the usual heartfelt lament to using dated models of listening, but Rainbow Ball hears Caleb Followill in fine form. This and the likes of Nowhere to Run craft a dependable and light rock message with plenty of new style tinges in place. Kings of Leon needed a shakeup. Accepting the need for a new image and seeking it out is a larger step than most will take, and the result is a set of solid album tracks and a few singles of interest where they lash out at their past selves for not leaping sooner than they did. Better late than never.  

Harsh and well-mixed depths on Actual Daydream is where the band comes to life. Can We Please Have Fun is dedicated to being a culturally acceptable piece. It has the tone, style and constructs of an album playing up the period stylings. It works. Kings of Leon sound comfortable with themselves and as such reveal a delicate period of their work. Split Screen feels collaborative and charming with its stripped-back appeal battling against the often overstuffed-yet-charming production. But the band have not managed to overhaul their sound enough to prevent the comparisons to artists who were working these indie-like rock scenes a decade ago. Don’t Stop The Bleeding is the most obvious of all – a neat piece which lingers as an Arctic Monkeys riff with the same loved-up appeals of their earlier works. Kings of Leon do make it work at least and for much of this album there is a replication of tone as they feel their way through new genre stylings. Nothing wrong with that, but the band put the shields up when a personable experience is on the verge of slipping through. 

Stiff and straight rock pieces like Nothing to Do linger as soft attempts at attracting an old crowd. They fall short of being the boom of life to rock and roll they were once perceived as. But adaptation is key, and Kings of Leon are keen to continue whatever their new form may be. M Television does well to blur the line between their former days as arena rockers and their tones now as possibly relevant musicians who have inevitably turned to their roots and evaluated their careers. Despite this desire to dig deep and discover themselves again, there is very little of personable quality. All the highs of Can We Please Have Fun come from their heavy instrumentals and most of those are buried towards the back end of the album, drowning out the Followill vocals who works only in gestures, not experiences. Even with those broad and personable experiences, the likes of Ease Me On flow through and gather a consistent enough tone for a band that needed stability. They get it with Can We Please Have Fun.