The Kings Of Leon Deliver A Spellbinding Performance at BST Hyde Park!!

The Kings Of Leon Deliver A Spellbinding Performance at BST Hyde Park!!

By the time the Kings Of Leon took to the stage, to say the audience were warmed up and ready for a good time was the understatement! With England literally having just made it through to the Euro quarter-finals and having already been warmed up by such class acts as Paolo Nutini, The Vaccines and The Meffs among others, the atmosphere within leafy Hyde Park was electric!

As The Kings took to the stage to rapturous applause and frontman Caleb launched into the first notes of ‘Ballerina Radio’, his instantly recognisable velvet tones entranced the ecstatic audience. Devastatingly handsome and immaculately turned out, he looked like he wouldn’t be out of place on the cover of GQ magazine. Visually stunning as the screens behind them burst into an array of lights, The Kings were an utter sensation from the very first honey drenched note! Never a band to leave their fans disappointed, they delivered a dynamic two hour set as they set the stage a blaze with track after swaggering track!

Despite the incredibly good music, there was no denying that the jubilance of the crowd was perhaps in part a response to England’s victory in the Euros mere moments before, a jubilance echoed by drummer Nathan Followill who was proudly wearing his England number ‘9’ t-shirt in homage to his football heroes!

Whilst the hits came thick and fast, there was no lack of their newer material on the set tonight as moving away from their earlier radio friendly hits, songs like ‘Only The Night’, had a rawer sound than their previous offerings, almost as if the Kings no longer felt the need to live up to what’s expected of them, instead adopting a this is us, take us or leave us attitude, and take them we did, because that rawer sound made their tracks more vital and better than ever, proving that it might be 25 years since they first swaggered onto the UK music scene, but they are fresher and hotter than ever before!

And whilst they still delivered all of their most loved crowd pleasers as you’d expect, there was also plenty of tracks from their most recent album, ‘Can We Please Have Fun’. Tracks like ‘Mustang’ and ‘Seen’ showed a new swaggering and edgy side to The Kings, that was a big step away from their previous radio friendly tracks like ‘Sex on Fire’ and ‘Use Somebody’. Perhaps a bold step, but somehow it just worked!! But whilst these tracks stood strong alongside their classic hits, they lacked some of the sing along potential of their earlier material.

Although it was immediately clear that their newer material certainly held its own, at the end of the night, there was no doubt that their classic singalong favourites like ‘Use Somebody’ and ‘Sex on Fire’ were the real star of the show!!

Photos and Review by Louise Phillips

All photos are owned by Louise Phillips Music Photography

Setlist:

Ballerina Radio
On Call
The Bucket
Taper Jean Girl (tour debut)
Manhattan
Revelry
Nothing to Do
My Party
Sex on Fire
Don’t Stop the Bleeding
Comeback Story
Pyro
Mustang
Molly’s Chambers
Milk
Fans
Back Down South
Nowhere to Run
King of the Rodeo
Wait for Me
Split Screen
The Bandit
Find Me
Closer
Seen

Encore:

Rainbow Bali
Waste a Moment
Cold Desert (tour debut)
Use Somebody