Youth & Young Manhood
- Kings of Leon
- Band Name: Kings of Leon
- Record Label: RCA
- Release Date: Aug 19, 2003
- Critic Score
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100Makes you want to chain-smoke while swigging a quart of Jim by the neck and taking agreeable houswives to stud. [Aug 2003, p.110]
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100Using and abusing passionate gospel, country sweetness and filthy guitar licks, the Kings of Leon are the kind of authentic, hairy rebels the Rolling Stones longed to be.
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This remarkable debut captures the sound of growing up and busting out without sparing the rough edges.
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Youth & Young Manhood is 2003's finest rock debut.
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If Alabama's Drive-by Truckers are the Second Coming of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Tennessee's Kings of Leon are ZZ Top -- barons of boogie.
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Their lyrics... roil with the randiness and violence of Delta classics. [22/29 Aug 2003, p.132]
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83The Kings are probably sick of the "redneck Stones" tag already, but the signs are all there. [Aug 2003, p.111]
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80'Youth and Young Manhood' is nothing more than a great rock'n'roll album.
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80Despite their penchant for over-the-top tribute, Kings of Leon recycle classic rock 'n' roll with such earnestness and ebullience, that it's hard not to sing along. [#6, p.88]
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80While rough and a little patchy, it's a cracking debut nonetheless. [Aug 2003, p.108]
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They come on like old-school greasers who've been around long enough to know how to savor a moment.
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80The Kings of Leon sound like Molly Hatchet locking horns with the Gun Club. [#60, p.105]
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70There's absolutely nothing revolutionary about what these guys are pulling, but they synthesize a gritty staccato new wave attack with the arrogant, swaying machismo of old school boogie with an authority far beyond their few years.
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70Faced with the Kings of Leon's musical savvy, however, it's easy to believe the hype. [Sep 2003, p.104]
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70Their debut throbs like the Strokes with cross-eyed parents, their songs gritty and economical, their drummer nasty in all the best places. [Aug 2003, p.126]
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And not unlike the uncertain characters populating their songs, the band members have yet to stake out a distinctive musical identity, borrowing a little too liberally from their Southern Rock roots without adding anything original to the mythology.
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70A safe, if frayed, rock album that bristles and pops with flashes of brilliance, yet never ignites into the full-blown firestorm they're quite obviously capable of creating.
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63The band shows an incredible level of bravado on their album of fun summer hymns, but has a hard time breaking through the barrier the lackluster vocals create.
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Youth and Young Manhood isn't sonically adventurous, but in the new-millennium pop realm, some greasy licks sure sound good.
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42Their bar band approach sounds as if they've taken a book of rock history and, dutifully following along, bookmarked some of the most unremarkable passages.
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30The songs are so generic that the only thing left at the record's conclusion is the feeling of how hollow and insubstantial the whole thing is.