The world is getting closer to a new album of southern fried stadium rock from Kings of Leon, with the band announcing in a press conference that they’ll keep trying new songs out live, despite their record company not being too happy about it. The suits are worried that bootlegs of the shows will get out and start being disseminated on the net, potentially detracting from what they hope will be a massive seller now that their last album, Only By The Night has clocked up over six million sales worldwide.
“We didn’t want to go back out there and give ’em the Only By the Night tour, part two,” Caleb Followill told the media pack at the press conference. “Not only are you testing the songs out on the crowd, but we have that, ‘Oh, s***!’ moment when we’re looking at each other — ‘Are they gonna like this? Are they gonna sit down because it’s not ‘Use Somebody?'”
The band recorded the new album with producer Jacquire King (Norah Jones, Be Your Own Pet) and longtime mentor-collaborator (and rumoured actual main songwriter) Angelo Petraglia in New York City, with the front man saying the band decided to stray outside their bogan pleasing, stadium–lighters-aloft guitar/bass/drums arrangements in the studio by also adding fiddle, trumpet and lap steel to some of the tracks.
“I think every one of them really complements the songs, and I think having done that, it’s really gotten us excited for the future and where we can go with the band and what we can do,” Followill says.
