Photo: WENN
Kings Of Leon debuted new material from their upcoming album Mechanical Bull with a headline set at the iTunes Festival last night (Wednesday 11 September). Watch the band performing 'Family Tree' and 'Wait For Me' below.
The Tennesse rockers were supported by emo giants Jimmy Eat World at the Roundhouse, before they tore into an epic and career-spanning 21 song set.
Kicking off with recent single 'Supersoaker', Caleb Followill and co got off to a loud and lively start and rattled through a brilliant run of awesome classics that included 'The Bucket', 'Notion', 'Closer' and 'Crawl'.
Despite the audience of competition winners giving the band a cold and mixed reception, new tracks, old classics and fan favourites seemed to land very well with the crowd and the band seemed in pretty high spirits, with Caleb at one point joking "We're going to play some old stuff, we're going to play some new stuff - but it's not up to you, we're not just going to play old stuff" before delivering a fiery rendition of 'Don't Matter (Always The Same').
"You guys sound so pretty," smiled Caleb at one point, "you can do that on every song if you want - except you probably won't do it on this one because I don't know if you've heard it yet" - before kicking off the rolling beat of new track 'Family Tree'. The song rumbles with the quiet-loud-quiet-loud country-meets-Pixies chemistry of their Because Of The Times material and explodes with an undeniably infectious chorus that simply screams with future single material.
Watch the band performing 'Family Tree' below:
Certain moments where the band aired material from Come Around Sundown felt quite lukewarm, but the timeless quickfire explosions that came with 'Four Kicks', 'Molly's Chambers' and 'On Call' more than made up for it. It's easy to see why the band have chosen to lean towards the simple but effective nature of their earlier work on Mechanical Bull - with new song 'Wait For Me' rolling with the ease of anything from Aha Shake Heartbreak or Youth And Young Mahood, but elevated by the grandoise stadium rock of their latter day material.
Watch the band performing 'Wait For Me' below:
As the crowd swayed arm in arm to the closing howls of 'Use Somebody', huge cheers erupted to welcome the band back onstage for the frankly quite flat encore of 'Radioactive', which seems to fall on largely deaf ears - before the closing of 'Black Thumbail' and 'Sex On Fire' see the Kings seal their night with a kiss and a kick with some steel-toe cap boots. If they can maintain this kind of momentum, then the next year will belong to them once again.
Kings Of Leon's setlist was:
1. Supersoaker
2. The Bucket
3. Notion
4. Closer
5. Crawl
6. Don't Matter
7. Fans
8. Back Down South
9. Pyro
10. Family Tree
11. Four Kicks
12. Molly's Chambers
13. Be Somebody
14. Wait for Me
15. On Call
16. Cold Desert
17. Knocked Up
18. Use Somebody
Encore:
19. Radioactive
20. Black Thumbnail
21. Sex on Fire
