Kings of Leon delight Birmingham crowd with career spanning 27-song set at Utilita Arena

The quartet of brothers Caleb, Nathan and Jared Followill and cousin Matthew released their ninth album can We Please Have Fun in May and on Saturday night, played to a capacity crowd at Birmingham’s Utilita Arena on the second date of their UK tour.

And boy, did the Tennessee rockers provide value for money – with a career spanning 27 song set.

While the bulk of their set featured tracks from their latest record, Kings Of Leon dipped into every album in their back catalogue, from the raucous southern garage rock of their debut Youth & Young Manhood through to the polished rock sound of multi-million copy selling behemoth Only By The Night.

Joining Kings Of Leon were London indie rockers The Vaccines who did a more than admirable job warming up the Utilita audience with hits including If You Wanna and Post Break Up Sex.

Kings Of Leon took to the stage with Ballerina Radio, the opening track from their latest album and while it’s likely an intentional slower burn of an intro, it’s immediately followed by On and The Bucket which sparks the Utilita into life.

By the time you’re touring arenas, it’s a given you’re clocking up serious sales and streaming figures.

However, there’s probably only a handful of acts out there with a hit which has amassed more than two billion streams on Spotify and YouTube alone.

So, what do you do with Sex On Fire? Simple. You play it in the first quarter of your set at a breakneck speed.

Outside of your Taylors and your Springsteens etcetera, it’s unlikely you’ll ever hear an audience sing along as loudly to such an iconic hit.

But it’s not just the obvious singles which resonate with the Kings Of Leon fans at the Utilita, with newer tracks including Mustang and Nowhere To Run getting people singing and dancing along.

As Queens Of The Stone Age proved at this venue at the end of last year, it’s possible to put on a captivating arena show which relies on the music more than necessarily the visuals.

While their name is spelled out on screens at the rear of the stage at the start of their set, you’re not being pummelled into submission by LEDs for two hours.

In fact, tonight’s show feels reminiscent of a theatre, with large, draped, curtains each side of the stage, with visuals projected onto them.

There’s no pyro (other than the track from Come Around Sundown), no blasts of Co2 – in fact, the array of lighting hung from above the audience is about as fancy as it gets. (Things do turn a bit psychedelic in the encore for Rainbow Ball).

Live, Kings of Leon are augmented with two further multi-instrumentalists, who flesh out their sound.

There’s little chatter from frontman Caleb during their set, other than to talk about a gig earlier in the tour where the band had complaints about people singing and dancing too much.

After joking that he understands not everyone has a beautiful voice, he adds, “we like to hear you sing, we like to see you dance and we want to see everyone have fun.”

For the bulk of Kings Of Leon’s set, you know what you’re getting, short sharp bursts of alternative rock, but one standout song of the night breaks that mold towards the end of their set.

It may not pack the punch or collective streams of other tracks in their back catalogue, but Closer is a masterpiece, slow, brooding, moody and performed to perfection.

After leaving the stage briefly Kings Of Leon returned to end their set with Waste a Moment and Use Somebody.

Twenty five years and nine albums into their career, the fact Kings Of Leon are still filling stadiums while many contemporaries from the 00s same scene aren’t is a testament to the songwriting power of the Followills.

And, if their latest album title is posing a question, the simple answer is ‘yes’ and it’s clear they are.

Kings Of Leon played:

Ballerina Radio

On Call

The Bucket

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 Ball

Waste a Moment

Use Somebody