Kings of Leon Cover the Pixies, Play New Songs at Explosive Toronto Concert

Posted on Jul 29th 2010 4:30PM by Jonathan Dekel
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Jason Merritt, Getty Images

It may not be the city's most acoustically impressive venue, but Toronto's Molson Amphitheatre has seen its fair share of spine-tingling crowd sing-alongs. Wednesday night was no exception, as 16,000 frenzied fans joined with Nashville's rock superstars Kings of Leon for a hair-raising rendition of their signature single, 'Sex on Fire.'

During the climax of the group's set, lead singer Caleb Followill -- suffering from a slight cold -- invited the sold-out audience to help him out on the 2008 smash. Encouraging the crowd with, "Don't let me down," Followill launched into the tune's opening riff and was consequently bombarded with a sea of euphoric fist pumping. When the anthemic chorus kicked in, the crowd yelled the lyrics at the top of their lungs, leaving the heartthrob with an awestruck grin.

"We've had some good shows on this tour; we've had some funny shows on this tour," Followill told the crowd (referring to the group's unfortunate run-in with pigeon excrement a week earlier). "But this is the best crowd we've played to."

Nearly an hour earlier, the family band had arrived onstage with little fanfare, launching into set opener 'Crawl' before unleashing 'Notion,' the first of several crowd-pleasing singles from the their platinum-selling fourth album, 'Only by the Night.' The rest of the set played out like a greatest hits collection, with the group moving seamlessly between their early garage rock-based material and their later, more polished efforts.

While previous tours have suffered from too many peaks and lulls in tempo -- due to the band's tendency to play several slow-burners in succession -- Wednesday night proved to be a well-balanced affair. Aided by an enthusiastic capacity crowd, the Followill clan kept the tempo up by consistently pairing downtempo songs with either a recognizable hit or a raunchy early number.

Despite warnings from their label, the Kings trotted out four new songs, the most striking of which is the '50s-tinged nostalgia number 'Mary,' -- which stuck out like a welcome sore thumb sandwiched in between 'Milk' and 'Closer.' The other three -- 'Immortals,' 'Radioactive' and 'Southbound' -- were similar in sound to the Kings' recent material, with the Eagles-esque harmonies of the latter providing a satisfying penultimate closer to their hour and a half set.

The group even managed to sneak in a rather remarkable cover of the Pixies' 'Where Is My Mind?' Though lost on most of the crowd, the song fit with the band's original material -- not so surprising considering bassist Jared Followill is a noted Kim Deal fan, and 2007 single 'Charmer' apes the legendary grunge forefathers' signature sound. Caleb's joke -- "that was a new song" -- was met by a sea of clueless applause.

By the time the fireworks exploded at the end of barn-burner 'Black Thumbnail,' Caleb's signature rasp -- which the singer admitted had been helped by several shots of whiskey earlier in the evening -- was clearly waning. Judging by the diminishing levels of both volume and bromancing going on in the audience, he wasn't the only one.