McFearless: A Night Spent with the Kings of Leon

The Wikipedia entry for alchemy describes it as,”both a philosophy and a practice with an aim of achieving ultimate wisdom as well as immortality, involving the improvement of the alchemist as well as the making of several substances described as possessing unusual properties.”

For some reason, every time I see a great band live, I can’t help but put what they do on stage in that context. There is always an element of alchemy in it for me, at least as far as the true artists go.

How the Wiki definition of alchemy and the appreciation of great music merge for me is in the notion of using substances that possess ” unusual properties” in the aim of achieving wisdom and, ultimately, immortality through the “improvement of the alchemist”. Just in the fashion that alchemy is so described, there is an unknowability about it; a sense in which its final results are ineffable and cannot be penetrated by rational thought and must rather be surrendered to and experienced on their own terms with a dropping of the pretensions of understanding held by the enquirer.

As a musician, you can’t really think your way into music that divines wisdom and immortality, it must be a project of feeling and intuition. So too, as a listener, are you incapable of rationalizing the power of a song that cuts to the core of the human emotional experience, it is something that, in moving you, must be felt and to which you, if you are to be moved, must open yourself.

The whole process is one of surrender, on both sides. That surrendering is, when I step back to look at my own experiences, an acknowledgment of the end product to point beyond the processes used to create it and, intrinsically, transcend the parameters of knowing that define the banalities of life lived by rote. By surrendering you allow an opening of freedom, to taste life lived in a truly creative and novel fashion, which, in part, explains the strength that music continues to exert in our modern lives.

Seeing them live on Thursday night, the Kings of Leon proved themselves capable of achieving that degree of transmission in no uncertain terms.

With the lights low and the entire stadium rumbling in anticipation, KOL entered stage left to a booming piece of familiar classical music that was simultaneous ominous and uplifting. Without a word to the audience, the family Followill ripped into a set that was sonically dexteritous, technically sinuous, musically immanent, and emotionally transcendent. The sound of guitars squealed with choatic delight, splitting the air of the stadium cleanly like heretical scythes, while Caleb’s vocal drawl grounded one’s ears in a salty call to shared experience.

The music alternated evenly between tracks from earlier break out success Because of the Times and the Kings’ latest testament to rock ‘n roll’s recurring Lazarus sanctity Only by the Night featuring a line up of favourites like Charmer, My Party, Fans, Closer, Sex On Fire, On Call, 17, Cold Desert, Knocked Up, Ragoo, among others with punctuated highlights from Aha Shake Heartbreak and Youth and Young Manhood.

Overwhelming and crystalline, at one point my wife turned to me and remarked that she’d wished she’d done more homework on the band given how good they were. She didn’t make that comment again for the rest of the night because, at base, it didn’t matter whether you knew every lyric or the different chord progressions, quality music is able to catch you in its grip and transfix your every fiber.

In this regard, the Kings of Leon played the highwire just so, interacting with the audience and uttering the oft heard comment from American artists that Canada is, “so cool,” and how, “glad we are to come play for you,” against the stark and sometimes bitter contrast of their native audiences. But the show was only peppered with two speeches from frontman Caleb Followill, enough to show he meant every scream and groan, but not so much as to shroud the experience in the drip of pedantics.

A pared down stage leant to the overall thrust of the night: lights are helpful, but lasers don’t make a fucking rock show. The focus at every moment was on the contours of liminality that were collectively called forth and transgressed; a ritual of letting go and coming together perfected by the greatest shamans of our popular culture that keep parents, politicians, and police officers awake at night. The resonating question that permeates any musical reification drew hard upon our conscience: if I can be here like this, where can’t I be like this, also?

The challenge of answering awaited in the pouring rain outside. Water met concrete met flesh, sweat, and hope in the swirling confusion of possibility. It was everybody’s night.

Photos c’est moi.

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Tags | alchemy, Calgary, concert review, Kings of Leon