"Aha Shake Heartbreak," the new album from Kings of Leon [ tickets ], starts with a garage-y ode to partying ("She's 17, but I done went and plum forgot it") and ends with "Rememo," a struggling-to-continue lament that sounds like the circus leaving town.

It's fitting, considering the Followill boys (three brothers and a cousin)--raised by a struggling evangelist minister father on the road and deep in Tennessee--have seen enough highs and lows of crazed rock success since their debut CD, "Youth & Young Manhood," last year, it would only make sense their new songs might at turns cautiously celebrate, and at others moan and regret.

Like a cloudy report from the road, we get drunkenness and hangovers, sex, travel and overall bad living. We also get serious classic-rock guitar solos, out-of-nowhere congas and hand claps, cowboy lullabies and the word "blues" released through a yodel. At times, it drifts so much into influences--The Who, Allman Brothers, Stones and, mostly, The Strokes--you'd think the music would be lost. But through the garbled, smoke-addled vocals of lead brother Caleb, the songs mostly rise out of it: part Pentecostal prayer, part meltdown and part oblivious good time.