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May 10, 2024If you’re coming to Kings Of Leon expecting something experimental or anything really out of the ordinary, you’re a bit of a numpty (see also: Interpol, The Killers, &c.). But come to Can We Please Have Fun with an open mind and an open heart and you’ll find it’s more than worth a shot.
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May 10, 2024In "Mustangs," which asks, "Are you a mustang or a kitty?" Your desire to answer that question may or may not depend on how deeply you spark to the album. Yet, the lyric is playful, Pop Art-provocative, and speaks to the joy, sweat, and poetic inspiration coursing through all of Can We Please Have Fun.
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May 10, 2024It’s a happy surprise to find a fresh, shiny energy-driving CWPHF. The tunes are sparkier, tempos more varied and the sonic textures cheerier, as though the band were given a clean shave and a hot lemon-scented towel.
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May 9, 2024It's no surprise party - and less giant leap than consolidatory glide - but Can We Please Have Fun has its fair share of high times. [Jun 2024, p.74]
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UncutMay 9, 2024The results range from flights of lysergic beauty on “Rainbow Ball”, “Split Screen” and “Seen” to a burst of jagged, early-days energy on “Nothing To Do”. For the first time in ages, they’re not overthinking it. [Jun 2024, p.36]
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May 9, 2024Can We Please Have Fun shows that these family rockstars aren’t afraid of change, and they’re sliding smoothly into whatever their next phase will be.
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May 9, 2024If you’re looking for tidy metaphors, you’ve got the wrong band. If it’s a brew of briny bass lines and funky dumb melodies that you seek, however, you’re seated at the right bar. Perhaps these tracks aren’t revelatory, but they’re worth reveling in.
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May 9, 2024Not everything here lands, and at times the raucous performances can work against the songwriting, but when it connects, this album is ready to lay a haymaker on fans.
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May 13, 2024Kings dial their usual bellow and wallow routine way down, while mustering just enough passion for the album’s occasional rock setpieces: “Hesitation Gen” and “Seen” are their most effective rippers in several albums.
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May 10, 2024The 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. .... Sadly, nearly every lyric dissolves into garbled nonsense.
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May 10, 2024This is easily KOL’s most promising, liberated record for over a decade but still surprisingly restrained in places. Can they have fun? Yes it appears, in places, but they could have had a whole lot more.
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May 10, 2024There is a flowing sense of melody and dreamy atmosphere to mid-tempo songs (Actual Daydream, Nowhere to Run, Don’t Stop the Bleeding, Ease Me On) and a fistful of thrillingly raucous rockers (Nothing to Do, Hesitation Generation).
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MojoMay 9, 2024They do sound less corporate, more like their original idiosyncratic selves. [Jun 2024, p.90]