Review: Kings of Leon – O My Beloved
King of Leon began in 2003 as two Tennessee brothers and a cousin making grungy, hurried garage rock, with songs that sounded like they’d been written in the back of a van. Because of the Times stretched that sound into seven-minute songs and darker corners.
Then came Only by the Night, which catapulted them to worldwide arenas they’ve filled ever since. At times, the past decade has felt like a band trying to get back down the staircase they’d climbed, repeatedly and not always convincingly. 2024’s Can We Please Have Fun was a plea for lightness, and its chart performance in America, a career low, suggested nobody was sure what to do with that plea.
O My Beloved is the first record where they stop asking permission. Self-produced for the first time, it was made on a nine-to-five schedule that the band describe with obvious pride, and the louder songs they’d been developing were simply set aside. What remains is 13 tracks of acoustic warmth and open-air Americana, mostly about marriage, children and gratitude.
“My Whole World” opens the album with a loose, stretched-out contentment, and “KOYSAR” (short for kick off your shoes and run) has a bass line with real bounce beneath its small-town romance. “The Hand” and “Rose” take on the harder side of love, fighting for someone and losing of them, while Caleb Followill’s rasp has softened into something closer to a murmur, and there’s a ripeness in it that the stadium years never allowed.
Some of the second half drifts into a pleasant sameness, and while some hear triumph others may wonder if it is a record too safe for its own good. For long-time fans, there’s no doubt that a few of the songs would benefit from a spark of the old danger. But sincerity is hard to fake, and the band aren’t faking it. Songs about family land differently when the family is actually in the room, and you can hear them here.
Ultimately, O My Beloved offers a band that has stopped chasing the version of itself that was easiest to sell. It’s a small, warm and gentle record, and because of that, probably their most honest in years.
