Having first butted heads over the respective merits of metal and pop-punk in middle school, King Elementary eventually made up over Strokes and At the Drive-In covers, and Kudzu, the second album from the still adolescent Mississippi quartet, moves them one step closer to the final post-teen realities of manhood. King Elementary still aren’t quite sure what they are, but at this point, “rock and roll band” fits just fine.
Kicking in the front door with hefty slop-rock boots, “For the Birds” swings the chorus’s sharp hooks around with gravelly bloodlust, while “Thief of Hearts” belies the slightest hint of radio punk nostalgia, throwing some “ba-da-bops” through the garage door, but begging a little too hard for the neighbors to listen. The pure, four-chord punk of “Rebbeca” suffers from a cryptic teenage melodrama that’s even more indecipherable on the Nirvana-esque “Hit the Mirror.”
Somewhere along the line, though, these boys finally turn off their radios and learn a few lessons on their own. When he’s not competing with his bandmates’ distorted stomp, frontman Morgan Jones sings with the same sincere abandon as Stephen Malkmus and Lou Barlow, and given enough sonic space, bassist Will Randolph crams an album’s worth of melody into just a few bars.
“Far Too Familiar” mixes intellectual hardcore prog with punk rock “oi”-isms, and “Kisses from the Stone” filters Alice in Chains through a rock-snob sieve. Hints of Fugazi dot much of the album’s better half, shaking hands with Dick Dale surf rock on “Spur of the Moment” and chiseling a crack into the sidewalk skip of “Satisfactory,” but the foggy sunlight of “Sand and Romance” is the album’s most vulnerable moment, when King Elementary finally bare their souls without whimpering pubescent clichés.
If their ascent into adulthood follows the same trajectory as Kudzu, these southern boys may soon reach far beyond their red clay radio roots. While their second album still betrays King Elementary’s youth and inexperience at times, it also suggests the possibility of an ageless maturity and confidence that would be the envy of most rock outfits. For a bunch of guys still stuck in dad’s garage, Kudzu is a hell of a record. For now, they’ve reached far beyond expectations, but given enough time and freedom, King Elementary may one day transcend such qualifications.
