NME.com had a limited-time free download of Crawl available on 28th July, running from 3pm to 5pm. Rumours that this was set to be Kings Of Leon’s first single from their forthcoming album, Only By The Night, were hurriedly dispelled a while back, and a band official statement lays that accolade in the figurative hands of the bluntly suggestive titled Sex On Fire.
The album is not due for release until late September, which means an anxious wait is in store for all Kings Of Leon fans. Amidst the hype and expectation – this being fuelled by the announcement of a UK Autumn/Winter tour, promoting the fresh material – the “leak” of the MP3 format of a song played at a number of gigs already, has curbed enthusiasm just a tad, but not doused the fires completely, as to make that near two-month wait a little less unbearable.
I had listened to the live version of Crawl, prior to the download announcement on Monday. At the time that I did, I’d managed to compare it with another currently unreleased song expected on the new album, Manhattan, and adjudged the latter to be more to my liking on first impressions. Updated second impressions as of now haven’t really improved my opinion either. Crawl isn’t a bad track; it has a solid bass-line, and instrumentation matches up well with lead vocalist, Caleb Followill. Overall, Crawl has a natural flow radiating from it; hard to describe to a T, but should you surmise my thoughts on it, I would say that it beckons listeners to truly appreciate the Southern roots of the band.
Sadly, that is all Crawl does. The song was clearly not devised to replicate Arizona off their last album – a beautiful, slower “home” style track that capitulates fully to the mercy of KOL’s Southern influences – because the guitar and drum arrangements are too up-tempo. Yet saying that, it lacks in abundance the kick of McFearless and the aptly named Four Kicks. In practice, Crawl is let down by the confusion and indecision over what style of track it could be, and hardly qualifies itself as being relative to any of those popular tunes from before its time. The end result is a wallowing in mediocrity. At a stretch, I was able to make an association between it and On Call, but even there, the knot is a fragile one; On Call is a two-part “builder-upper”, while Crawl remains constant throughout.
My knockabout of this latest Kings Of Leon track is certainly not a premise for a pre-release bashing of Only By The Night. I doubt the 3 brothers and a cousin would have authorised the Internet distribution of their “best” songs, or even played them in concerts beforehand. Besides, Crawl is far from a disaster; it serves as a stable base layer to what I hope is another delicious success of an album.
A little bit extra:
Sign up for a free download of Crawl here (enter your e-mail, country and post code)...
http://www.kingsofleon.com/
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