King Falcon – “Shake! Shake! Shake!” (single)

King Falcon are fresh out of the studio with their debut single “Shake! Shake! Shake!” and its companion music video, but if you didn’t know their backstory, you’d probably think this song came off of their third or fourth album. The pair’s sound is uncomplicated and very intense from top to bottom, but melodicism is always at the center of even their most vicious of attacks in “Shake! Shake! Shake!.” The riff serves as the cornerstone of the moody melody here, a searing lead vocal peppering it with just enough spice to form a slick harmony. The percussion is unstoppably precise in rhythm but messy in tonality, creating the sort of primal rock emotion that I haven’t heard a lot of in some time now. King Falcon are a perfect match for both each other and a rock audience that has been missing a new generation of heroes for too long.

MORE ON KING FALCON: https://kingfalconband.com/

For their being a duo, this act has so much physicality to their sound that it’s hard to believe they aren’t using some sort of magnification tools behind the board. When the drums crash into the melody, they’re fiery and crushing, while the vocal is left unguarded by the surrounding string play. Even when the lyrics are palatable and making sense to us, they feel as though they’ve been designed to play into the rhythm of the music instead of conveying a specific narrative to us through linguistics. It’s raw power, and unlike their indulgent predecessors, King Falcon aren’t having to rely on a lot of bells and whistles to sound this way.

The chemistry between these two players feels unforced in every way, and in the music video for “Shake! Shake! Shake!,” we get a good look at how much of a flow they can get into when the energy is right. The song features a stupendous interplay between the three instrumental elements here, and though the video isn’t taken from an actual live performance, it has the feel of an authentic look into their artistry more than it does the stereotypical music video. You can’t fake a strong artistic connection, and while these guys have only been at this for a minute now, they’re already showing more prowess together than some of their lauded mainstream peers.

I hadn’t heard of King Falcon before getting a copy of “Shake! Shake! Shake!” from an industry colleague this month, but I can see why fans of true blue rock n’ roll would be getting curious about their sound. We can’t judge the depth of their songwriting techniques with a track as simplistic as this one is, but I think there’s more than enough here to assume that they care more about tonality and sonic muscularity than they do fitting in with the elite crowds in pop/rock today. That’s exactly the kind of attitude that we need for of in this genre right now, and with any luck, King Falcon’s style and approach might influence some of their less than impressive contemporaries in the future.

Samuel Pratt