The Eagles of Death Metal Leave No Sex Pun Unturned

The Eagles of Death Metal are to Death Metal what Don Henley’s Eagles are to… um… music. That is, they are antithetical to it. However, The Eagles of Death Metal are pretty good at rehashing rockabilly and generally providing a good time. You could say, in fact, that they are to classic rock what The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion was to blues. So if you like that sort of thing (and Beavis and Butt-head quality sex puns), you’ll probably like Heart On, the new album by Jesse Hughes and Josh Homme. Homme,  the lead Queen of the Stoneage, plays drums for The Eagles of Death Metal and sings back-up. Hughes provides the guitar licks and downright silly vocals (If you have a little brother in junior high who wanted to write songs about fucking and sing them in a way that seems badass to a thirteen-year-old, you’d understand where Hughes is coming from).

Clearly, The Eagles of Death Metal are out to have a good time. That’s why their album title is a sex pun, most (if not all) of the  songs are about fucking (“Solo Flights” is about masturbating – way to shake it up, guys!), and there’s plenty of grunting and groaning in the vocals. Normally, I have no patience for novelty songs but The Eagles of Death Metal aren’t a novelty band (sorry kids, The Darkness was totally a novelty band). They’re not serious, but that’s not a bad thing; Interpol is intensely serious and also extremely boring. The Eagles of Death Metal are pushing the old Chuck Berry shtick to its logical, modern conclusion. Ramona’s traded in her tight dress for tight pants and she’s out on the dance floor with Hughes and Homme instead of Mr. Berry (who has, undoubtedly, hidden a camera in the lady’s room of whatever club this is. How the mighty have fallen).

The trick for The Eagles of Death Metal is to create pretty bangin’ arrangements for their lyrical silliness and then keep the songs brief. There are only two songs on Heart On that are longer than four minutes and most are under three. And while the sense of humor is front and center for The Eagles of Death Metal, they never sacrifice melody. These are well-crafted songs about fucking, the sort of perverse little ditties that I wish had populated the FM radio of my misspent youth.

The opening hand-claps and Rolling Stonesish guitar of “Anything ‘Cept the Truth” let you know what you’re in for. Homme is a more-than-capable drummer (far better than that shitty Lars Ulrich) and once you get past the pastiche, the guitars are good for a nod or two of the head. There are some surprises as well, like the Tom Waits-esque growling that inexplicably introduces “Wannabe in L.A.,” (one of the few puns that isn’t a sex pun on the album). “Tight Pants” features a chorus that’s minor-league LCD Soundsystem, one of the many treats that keep Heart On from becoming too tedious.

Of course, Heart On still does feel a bit tedious, and that’s largely due to the subject matter. There’s very little diversion from the macho pretense and cock-grabbing songs about gettin’ it on. Which is why I get bored about half way through the album and start to look around for other things to listen to.  “Now I’m A Fool,” is nice break from the machismo, and it’s one of the first Eagles of Death Metal songs I’ve heard that smacks even slightly of real depth.

When I was in high school, my friends and I used to buy six-packs of Tab soda and take turns draining the cans (warm) as fast as we could;  this resulted in some lengthy and raucous belches. It’s a good time for bored adolescents, and it might be fun to revisit sometime, but I’m kinda past that point in my life. That’s how I feel about Heart On by the time I get to “Cheap Thrills”. Heart On isn’t a bad album, but I’m not gonna crank it up a hundred times a week and it’s not gonna change my life. That’s not its mission, though. I suspect its mission is to get Hughes and Homme laid and I wish them every success in that endeavor.

The Kings of Leon And ’80s Movies

If you agree with Pitchforkmedia (and it’s okay if you do, just don’t make a habit of it), you’re just upset as can be that the Kings of Leon didn’t stick to their hayseed roots (see their first two albums, Youth & Young Manhood and the stellar Aha Shake Heartbreak) on their third album, Because of the Times. You probably feel like they were trying to be a hick U2 as opposed to the hick Strokes you wanted them to be. If that’s the case, know this up front: you’re not gonna like Only By the Night.

On their fourth album, the Kings of Leon continue down the arena-rock path they jumped on for Because of the Times, but this time around, there’s a lot more of the slow-burning, bass-driven, ballady stuff. Caleb Followill has a unique sort of yowl that makes his songs more endearing, especially given his lack of lyrical depth (sorry, but “This sex is on fire!” is funny, but not necessarily… um… poetry).  You can tell that Followill is trying a little tenderness on Only By the Night, and it’s mostly enjoyable as long as you know what you’re in for.

So here’s what you’re in for, and why I can heartily endorse Only By the Night as a slightly better than mediocre pop album: the album is the soundtrack for an ’80s movie, probably directed by John Hughes, that doesn’t actually exist. If you don’t believe me, listen to “Use Somebody,” and “Be Somebody,” and tell me that you can’t picture Corey Feldman/Haim running down a street in the rain to one of those songs.  Or maybe imagine Molly Ringwald sobbing to “Manhattan” while waiting for … some other fucking Brat Packer to throw a rock at her window and whisk her off to the prom. Unfortunately, though, this isn’t the ’80s, it’s the Aughts, and we don’t have John Hughes-style cheesy teen-flicks. We have mumblecore. And for sure, Only By the Night could be perverted into a mumblecore movie soundtrack, but not with much success because Followill is still able to sneak in the sort of visceral sex pun that would cause the mumblecore kids to blush all over under their sweaters. For instance, on “I Want You,” where he talks about a “A choke/ a gag/ she spit up and then came back for more.” (Yes, this is a reference to a blowjob and is probably what the Pitchfork reviewer thought was “open misogyny”, a phrase that’s been showing up a lot on p-fork lately. Which begs the question – does Pitchforkmedia think that all oral sex is misogynist?)

Look: I’m not gonna sit here and try to convince you that Calib Followill is some sort of pop genius (he isn’t -  in fact, part of the charm of him and the other Kings of Leon is that they’re more like rock ‘n’ roll savants). And I’m certainly not gonna throw Only By the Night to the top of my Best of 2008 list. But I’m also not gonna ignore the thrill of shouting along, “This sex is on fire!” I’m not gonna deny the melodic basslines of “Notion” or “Cold Desert.” I’m not gonna pretend, unlike certain pitchfork folks, that I’m somehow above any and all cheesy indulgences. Yes, emphatically yes, lines like “I’m too young to feel this old” are trite as fuck (even following the line “Jesus don’t love me”) but the melody of “Cold Desert” is still infectious. What do you want? I listen to important, serious music too (like The Clash. Very important, very serious), but think about it: it would be far worse if Kings of Leon were trying to save the world – the Followill brothers are just not capable of that kind of writing. You’d end up with superficial, Incubus-level political songs and the fact is, in today’s political climate, we have enough of that shit (see “Sweet Neo-Con” by The Rolling Stones for examples of this – yes, I can agree with you politically and still wish you never write another song as long as you live). It’s far better to me to hear the Kings of Leon doing their cheesy thing at levels slightly above mediocre (occasionally stumbling into the realm of Awesome, as on “Notion” and “Crawl”) and enjoy them for what they are.

Admittedly, if it wasn’t Caleb Followill singing these songs, I probably wouldn’t care at all about them. Dude’s got a unique voice, not necessarily a good one, but the kind of howling dog thing I really like. This kind of voice might be a problem for you if you openly orgasm over Sufjan Stevens and his undeniably pretty wisp of a tenor. But I’ll take Tom Waits and Caleb Followill over Sufjan any day of the week.

Only By the Night is a cheesefest for sure, not to be taken seriously at all, but it is a lot of fun to listen to while playing Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Or watching The Breakfast Club with the sound turned off. My reasons for forgiving the bad things about Kings of Leon are every bit as arbitrary as Pitchfork’s reasons for not forgiving them (though only one of us would cop to that); you’ll have to check it out for yourself and decide. For my money, I want to film someone who looks like Corey FeldHaim running in the rain to “Be Somebody.” Take from that what you will.

The Midnight Organ Fight

Ah, Scott Hutchison, you had me at “It takes more than fucking someone to keep yourself warm.”

Well, actually, Frightened Rabbit won me over a long time ago, with their brief but beautiful debut, Sing the Greys, which came out just last year. And now the terrified critters (Scott Hutchison, his brother Grant on drums, and Billy Kennedy on guitar and keyboards) are back with The Midnight Organ Fight (best sex metaphor ever), which not only expands upon the sonic palette they built on their debut, but is also one of the best albums (so far) of 2008.

The Midnight Organ Fight pulls of a good trick – this music is not far from latter-day U2, CW teen drama-ready pop, except that Hutchison’s lyrics sabotage the radio-friendliness of most of these songs with their besotted frankness. “Backwards Walk” could be a Coldplay tune but for its outro of “you’re the shit and I’m knee-deep in it”. Okay, it couldn’t be a Coldplay song because Coldplay sucks. But you get the idea.  Likewise, “Poke” could fill out one of those cloying Grey’s Anatomy montages but for the line, “Or should we kick its cunt in/ and watch as it dies from bleeding?” The relationships on The Midnight Organ Fight all die violent deaths and Hutchison’s voice staggers about the album, lurching forcefully into each melodic passage. This guy is clearly coming off an epic fucking breakup and I feel for him, I really do, but sweet zombie Jesus, it sounds so good. If you can’t empathize with the line, “I may not want you back/ but I want to kill him”, then I just can’t help you. Sorry.

There’s a little bit of levity here, just enough to balance out the sadness. “Old Old Fashioned,” is a jaunty little jig and “Head Rolls Off,” is an upbeat number about Hutchison’s lack of faith; the song opens with one of my favorite lines: “Jesus is just a Spanish boy’s name.” The Onion’s AV club embedded the video in their review for this song and Frightened Rabbit’s playing this tune (“I believe/ in a house in the clouds/ God’s got his dead friends ’round/ and he’s painted all the walls red/ to remind them they’re all dead”) in a kindergarten classroom while little kids dance around joyfully. Priceless.

The album is infused with a melancholy hope as well. “Floating in the Forth” sees Hutchison ruminating on suicide after his girl walks out on him, a sentiment which would be stupid in a lot of cases but as he stands on a bridge thinking about taking the leap, he realizes he’s not that bad off. First, he’ll save suicide for another day and then another year and you get the feeling (‘take your life/ give it a shake”) that he probably won’t get around to it at all.

The Midnight Organ Fight is an impressive, honest, beautiful work about the death of relationships, the imminence of death, and the drugs and fucking we sometimes use to cope with those things. This is a tremendous record and I don’t know why you’re still reading this review instead of listening to The Midnight Organ Fight.