It’s probably going to be number one, it’s…
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[3.29]
Doug Robertson: While Kings of Leon have been away, counting their money and wondering how they got to the stage where even pigeons feel the need to express a critical opinion on them, they have clearly also been spending quite a lot of time listening to A) The Talking Heads in general and B) The Talking Heads’ cover of Take Me To The River in particular. Sadly they didn’t spend even a smidgeon of a second on the slightly more important C) actually having an original idea for once in their lives, and so this can be rated a D, which roughly equates to the same mark the pigeons gave them.
[2]
Alfred Soto: Thus, Kings of Leon solve the problem of giving a generation without its “Lakini’s Juice” a taste of stentorian religiomystic twaddle.
[3]
Martin Skidmore: One of the world’s more tedious rock bands, they seem to be after a kind of arena rock these days, and while the guitar playing is sort of bright in places, the deeply boring and unimaginative singing and song make this a total no-hoper.
[2]
Edward Okulicz: A pleasing clatter, a drony riff and I was very nearly dancing and wondering if Kings of Leon had discovered fun or something. They haven’t. The verses are inoffensive but when they amp up and rabbit on about it being IN THE WATER, something about it drips with a pretension that belies the fourth-grade poetry of the lyrics.
[4]
Anthony Easton: I think that Kings of Leon, who used to have a solid southern rock energy, has become slightly worse then Nickelback but better then Hedley — for a song that is about how local water influences local sound, the irony of the absolute genericness of this has the subtlety of a chainsaw.
[6]
Mallory O’Donnell: Every other rock band ever, meet the Kings of Leon. Kings of Leon, meet… oh, I see. You already know those dudes.
[2]
Chuck Eddy: So is this their “Cannonball” move, their late ’80s David Byrne move, or their late ’80s U2 move? Or did they do that last one already? Hard for me to separate these hacks’ music from all the tone-deafs who think they ever had anything to do with either “Southern rock” or “garage rock”, who think they made three (or any) of the 80 (or 8000) best albums of the past decade (howdy Rolling Stone), who think Caleb “We Don’t Want To Go In There And Do Something That Isn’t Real And Something That Doesn’t Really Move Us” Whatshisface has anything remotely interesting to say to justify any feature that’s not a business story about how their promotion and/or management teams have persuaded sheep in high places to take their nondescript tenth-generation post-grunge seriously, and helped turn that into a durable career. In the great tradition of the comparably useless Foo Fighters, their interesting-for-five-minutes-in-2003 backstory (they’re preacher’s kids, y’know!) has clearly proved quite valuable. But at least this track can’t be confused with Candlebox, Live, Seven Mary Three, or Blind Melon — I’ll give it that. (Also: Pigeon poop!)
[4]