Kings of Leon: Can We Please Have Fun review – polished but tired

(Polydor)
The Nashville rockers still sound great, but their lyrics seem bereft of ideas

Can We Please Have Fun is such a horrible phrase. It adheres to the Nashville rockers’ favoured five-syllable album title structure, if that’s important to you, but is prickly and passive-aggressive coming from four middle-aged men. Its intended message feels like inane boosterism given the state of the world; further proof of the quartet’s unending insularity. And why should rock be fun anyway? Kings of Leon’s best songs – Knocked Up, Milk, Closer – are shadowed by death or loss.

The good news is that Caleb Followill retains one of the great rock voices, a yearning, brittle, whiskey-brined caw that’s richer than ever. Kid Harpoon’s production is invariably excellent. Actual Daydream finds unlikely concord between coastal post-punk and heartland MOR; Nothing to Do is a wrecking ball of pent-up aggression; and the guitars on Mustang are electrifying shards of sound propelling the song’s racked, feral hunger.