968. Kings of Leon - Youth and Young Manhood (2003)

Track Listing

1. Red Morning Light
2. Happy Alone
3. Wasted Time
4. Joe’s Head
5. Tranny
6. California Waiting
7. Spiral Suitcase
8. Molly’s Chambers
9. Genuis
10. O Dusty
11. Holy Roller Novocaine

Review

There was a time in 2003 when a bunch of new bands just popped up in the collective conscious. This and the next two albums are a representation of that and while at the time they might all have seemed to have come from the same barrel, the truth is some distance really lets you appreciate them independently...

Kings of Leon are one of the good bands from that period,heavily retro and drawing very much from the early Rolling Stones and the Strokes. There is, of course a lot of Southern rock mixed in here as well.

The album is a pretty superficially fun one, even if closer scrutiny brings out murkier depths. But it is ultimately an enjoyable listen. A pretty nifty début which has a lot of space to develop and we will see what fruits it bears later on the list.

Track Highlights

1. Trani
2. Joe's Head
3. Holly Roller Novocaine
4. Molly's Chambers

Final Grade

9/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

The title appears to be taken from Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, his novel of poverty in 1920s Paris: "I had already seen the end of fall come through boyhood, youth and young manhood, and in one place you could write about it better than in another."

Holy Roller Novocaine: