Aha Shake Heartbreak

Like the debut, the second album was recorded with Ethan Johns, at his Three Crows Studio in Los Angeles, using the Beatles' old Abbey Road mixing desk. Rolling Stone's David Fricke reported that the band and Johns recorded it live in the studio, with no overdubs. The title comes from the third track, Taper Jean Girl. The European edition has a white orchid on a black background, and the later US edition a different orchid on white. Copies with the white orchid carry the bonus track Where Nobody Knows, and Slow Night, So Long hides an unlisted track, Too Good to Tango, within its run time. It is the only Kings of Leon album with a Parental Advisory label, owing to the language in Taper Jean Girl, Rememo, Soft and Four Kicks. Taper Jean Girl was later used in the films Disturbia (2007) and Cloverfield (2008).

The singles were The Bucket (number 16 in the UK), Four Kicks (24) and King of the Rodeo (41). Metacritic scores the album 74 from 31 reviews, and it is included in 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Rolling Stone ranked it 39th among the albums of the decade, and it has sold more than 910,000 copies worldwide. In the Guardian, Alexis Petridis called Razz a daring attempt to marry post-punk funk with stoner rock, and said that if you ignored the lyric booklet you had one of the more impressive albums of 2004. Fricke called them a great young rock and roll band from Tennessee that had made two nearly great albums. Pitchfork's Stephen M. Deusner disliked the lyrics and Caleb Followill's singing but found the band tighter and more confident than on the debut, and said Taper Jean Girl struts with undeniable bad-ass energy.