After a temporary rift (3 years is short compared to a Gallagher bust-up) the familial Followill clan are back with their sixth album “Mechanical Bull”. It’s a return to Kings of Leon form with lashings of Country Rock, gutsy ballads, stadium-filling crescendos and arena-friendly choruses.

The sequencing of the album works well blasting off with “Supersoaker” and moves into “Rock City” which ticks all the boxes for me. The lyrics of running around ”in the desert looking for drugs” and “shaking it like a woman” makes me wonder if Caleb was thinking of Breaking Bad’s mobile Meth lab or Miley’s ridiculous “twerking” furore.

Like their previous albums, KOL have employed the mastery of Angelo Petraglia, and it is mastered well, but it’s not reimagined. “Beautiful War” has all the elements of a Coldplay ballad – haunting, sentimental  and one that will have thousands of lighters/smart phone lights swaying in the air. The opening bars of “Temple” are reminiscent of The Cure and it becomes a pleasant enough track. Caleb’s undefined growling contrasts well with an initially gentle guitar on the album’s love song “Wait for Me” and as the track progresses the bass and drums get more energetic. But “Use Somebody” it is not.

“Mechanical Bull” contains no aural surprises – it is KOL at their most conventional.  Although the “dad” humour contained in “Comeback Story” lyrics “I walk a mile in your shoes/ Now I’m a mile away/ And I’ve got your shoes” made me smirk without the usual epic eye roll.

“Mechanical Bull” is a safe follow-up album to the disappointing “Come Around Sundown”. It probably doesn’t have the commercial radio friendly classics of “Only By The Night” nor does it contain tracks that possess the same quirky brilliance of “Taper Jean Girl”. The album is comfortable and predicable like a Sunday roast… and sometimes that’s just what you crave.

Mari Louise Healy