Gig review: Kings of Leon at First Direct Arena, Leeds

There’s an inauspicious lethargy before Kings of Leon take to the stage at Leeds’s First Direct Arena, a bone-tired lassitude at sharp odds with the sticky blue skies and summer bloom outside the doors.

The southern rock stalwarts have been struck by the untimely misfortune of a return to these shores in coincidental tandem with both a general election and a major football tournament; the strangest form of sociocultural double-eclipse within the national psyche, with a twin capacity to disappoint quite unlike any other spectacle.

In a way, this presents a terrific opportunity for the Tennessee favourites, still very much a family affair fronted by Caleb Followill alongside brothers Nathan and Jared, plus cousin Matthew.

With last month’s ninth record Can We Please Have Fun in their back pocket, all bets are off for a tour opener that has nothing to lose against a backdrop of national self-flagellation.

The band has struggled with a reputation for stone-faced deliverance in the past, less ebullient than several of their contemporaries. But for what Kings of Leon lack in conventional patter, they make up for with double-distilled Americana over a near-two-hour set that ticks off every corner of their catalogue.

Flanked by Moulin Rouge-red curtains, and framed with two sets of rounded screens arranged like church windows, they conjure up a six-string sermon, preaching their gospel to the congregation beneath a precarious canopy of lightbulbs strung from the rafters.

There is no complacency here too: Sex on Fire, that perennial student disco staple, is unceremoniously thrown out half an hour in, sparking a flurry of footsteps back from the bar post-haste.

Unsurprisingly, they lean on their late-noughties imperial phase as much as their new record, though both are studded with delectable cuts; Split Screen, with its reverbed eighties-pop hooks, matches up to the bourbon-soaked swagger behind Molly’s Chambers, or the keening Revelry.

Lesser-played cuts get their moment in the sun too: My Party and Wait for Me are dusted off for the first time in more than half-a-decade, while Comeback Story earns a rousing response from those at the front.

By the time the terrific surge of Waste a Moment gives way to the skyscraper woah-oh-ohs behind Use Somebody, the communal release is richly palpable.

As the crowd spills out into the twilight, preoccupations of 10 Downing Street and another Euro 2024 failure feel like mercifully distant memories.