Rock solid & ambitious

The Kings of Leon and Snow Patrol are two bands that have successfully garnered rabid audience followings, while earning the plaudits of the music scribes and critics. Their last CDs were hailed as minor masterpieces, tough acts to follow; yet they’ve both managed to come up with new albums that stick to the foundation of what made them so successful, while showing new direction and ambition.

Only By the Night — Kings of Leon (Sony BMG). Strangely more popular in Europe and the UK than in the US, the Tennessee band of brothers and a cousin is the Real Thing. Its music is atmospheric and solid, not only punchy, but even punch-drunk — listen to the strangled delivery of Caleb’s anguished vocals. The openers Closer (about a lovesick vampire) and Crawl are good numbers, but it’s the middle portion of the CD — the songs Sex on Fire, the plaintive Use Somebody, the danceable Manhattan, the anthem-like Revelry, and the precocious 17 — that had me grinning from ear to ear. Remember the first time you heard your favorite U2, or Bruce Springsteen, or Incubus songs? The middle portion of the album will give you that same feeling. It’s that solid a rock album as you’re bound to hear in 2009.

A Hundred Million Suns — Snow Patrol (Polydor, MCA Universal). Snow Patrol is rock from a different end of the rock spectrum. More EMO and indie than a band such as Kings of Leon, there’s sophistication and subtlety in the Patrol’s current approach to music. And if Eyes Open was its commercial breakthrough, A Hundred Million Suns will have to be tagged as its artistic ambition CD. More orchestral in concept and execution, one only has to listen to the mini-opus The Lightning Strike (the last cut on the CD) to know just how ambitious the band has become. A song in three movements, there are strong elements of Philip Glass-type music, but replete with vocals. The rest of the songs on the CD are more mainstream; Crack the Shutters being the one that’s more rock in nature, while tracks such as Take Back the City and Please Just Take These Photos From My Hands are direct descendants of the previous CDs musical direction.