Aha Shake Heartbreak - Dark Publications

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Editorial Reviews:

Amazon.com
Nomadic Southern evangelist Leon Followill may take soap suds to the mouths of the kinfolk wunderkinds--his three sons and a nephew--in Tennessee quartet Kings of Leon, whose second album spins enough cuss phrases and sexual allusions to leave Dolly Parton flushed. But the peculiar 20-something longhairs also fuel up on a filthy shotgun bass and relentless guitar riffs, complementing the delightfully discordant drawl of vocalist Caleb Followill to whittle a 35-minute grab bag of garage rock, English blues, sixties psychedelia, London Calling-ska, spaced-out country waltzes and front-porch, red-state revelry. Without revising its 2003 debut Youth & Young Manhood, producer Ethan Johns (The Jayhawks, Ray LaMontagne) steers the band down a similar mischievous road, integrating poles-apart rhythms and techniques into an energized jumble of rotating tempos and lyrical bombshells. Putting faith in earth-shakers like "Velvet Snow" and "Pistol Of Fire," the wound down and pleasing "Milk" and its yodeling cousin "Day Old Blues," the Kings ultimately escape Preacher Leon's retribution, rendering him speechless--save for a simple "amen." --Scott Holter

Album Description
Limited edition 2004 album from Kings Of Leon featuring the first single 'The Bucket'. Hand Me Down. Having released a debut album that you can safely say was well received (the NME described it as, 'one of the best debut albums of the last ten years'), Kings Of Leon have their work cut out to produce a suitable follow-up. Thankfully their sophomore effort, the strangely titled `A-Ha Shake Heartbreak', is more than a match for its illustrious predecessor. Fast paced, lyrically shocking and, rather surprisingly, with added yodelling, `A Ha Shake Heartbreak', is a shoe-in for one of the best albums of 2004.

Album Details
The Follow Up to the Band's Critically Acclaimed Debut `youth and Young Manhood', `a-ha Shake Heartbreak' . The Band Recorded the Album with Producer Ethan Johns (Ryan Adams, Counting Crows) Over Five Weeks in Studio City, California During the Summer of 2004.

Customer Reviews: Read 175 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

BRILLIANT! May 17, 2005
36 out of 46 found this review helpful

I find it interesting that most of the reviews for this cd are either 5 stars or 1 star. Ah, those crazy Kings of Leon. You either love em or hate em. Of course, many of the 1 star reviews are attributed to the capabilities (or lack thereof) of burning the cd to IPods and MP3 players, etc. While that may be annoying, I personally can't relate because I simply downloaded the album from the internet and it works just fine on my cd player.

And oh how fine Aha Shake Heartbreak truly is! On my first listen, by the time the opening track Slow Night So Long ended, I was grinning ear to ear. Finally a band that not only knows how to rock, but knows how to have fun! It's like the Beatles and the Stones have been resurrected through these kids. Every damn song on this album is sure to make you want to sing, smile, and... well, shake. Seriously, everytime I hear the drum and jingle bell intro to Taper Jean Girl, I want to get up and jump up and down on my car. If only I could do that while my car drives by itself.

Some people may not like these guys because of Caleb's voice, which is scratchy and pretty unintelligible. But once you get past the fact that you can barely understand anything this guy says, you come to realize it doesn't matter. This is pure rock n' roll, people. Best rock album I've heard in a LONG time. Best of 2005.

1 out of 5 stars

Best Album of the Year...worst DRM November 1, 2005
32 out of 35 found this review helpful

I feel pretty strongly that this album is the best album this year. Seriously. Songwriting, musicianship, production are all far outside what anyone else is doing today in modern music. The sound of this album is completely unequaled when compared to most other current recordings.

That being said, the DRM appears to be far worse then everyone here is claiming. There is evidence that Sony is employing rootkit techniques to install hidden files on your PC that cannot be removed. Not being able to easily copy files to an iPod is one thing, installing hidden unremoveable files on your PC is another.

Do a google search for "Sony" and "Rootkit", or check out this site:

http://www.sysinternals.com/blog/

1 out of 5 stars

CD contains DRM software that opens your system to viruses November 16, 2005
29 out of 39 found this review helpful

As many people may know by now, Sony was recently caught with egg on their face when a security specialist found out that a recently purchased CD (Van Zant: Get Right With The Man) from Sony music not only installed DRM software (digital rights management, to limit and outright prevent copying music to certain devices), but it did so in such a sneaky way that it hid itself entirely from Windows, and opened the system up to security issues such as viruses.

This CD has the same copyright protection, called XCP. When installed, Sony hijacks your computer and installs custom software which:

1) Hides itself entirely from Windows by installing as a rootkit
2) Hides itself in such a manner that any files begining with $sys$ are also hidden. For example, if you install the XCP copy protection software on your machine, and rename "document.doc" to "$sys$document.doc" it then becomes invivisble to you forever.
3) Installs its own custom CD-Rom drivers to hijack your system. It also sneakily names these drivers "Plug and Play Device Manager" to seem as if it's a part of Windows. Trying to delete these drivers manually will disable your CD-Rom drive entirely.
4) Offers no uninstall option until you manually contact Sony

As of my writing this review, Sony has "apologized" for this incident, and claims they will "re-evaluate" this copyright protection software on their CDs in the future.

In the meantime, a virus is currently running wild, which names itself begining with $sys$ in an attempt to hide from the user and virus scanners.

Several class action lawsuits are also pending against Sony right now.

In summary, as you can tell from above, Sony's actions here are absolutely horrible. This is your music. You purchased it, and they should not have any right to dictate how you can use it, let alone install software which compromises your system security.

This is one of the CDs with Sony's XCP copyright protection software on it, and as a result, you should not buy it to send a message to Sony that this will NOT be tolerated in the future.

5 out of 5 stars

KICKS THE CRAP OUT OF THE DEBUT (4.6 stars) December 16, 2004
28 out of 31 found this review helpful

First things first.

This is not like the debut album. Aha Shake is much more dynamic record. It stops and starts on a dime and the music has been pushed a bit more in all directions. Now don't get me wrong, it's still the same basic sound found on Youth and Young Manhood, it's just a bit more polished and thought-out in all areas.

You get indie-style radio friendly rockers like King Of The Rodeo and (the first single) The Bucket. But you also get a nice mix of slower numbers like Milk and Day Old Blues. The main difference from the debut is the slow numbers do MUCH more than slow the tempo. Milk is almost experimental in it's sparce arrangement and vocal delivery, while Day Old Blues pushes the idea of what is a chorus.

I found this record just as enjoyable as the first but I feel it has more to offer for the long haul, and that's just one reason why it's been one of my favorite records this year.

1 out of 5 stars

COPY PROTECTION CAN RUIN YOUR COMPUTER!!!! November 6, 2005
25 out of 30 found this review helpful

Stay away from this CD!!! What good is it if you can't listen to it? Feel like having to reinstall ALL of your software like I had to do? The copy protection on this CD crippled my computer -- don't let it happen to you!!!

BOYCOTT SONY !!!!

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