Album Analysis: Queens of the Stone Age (1998) by Queens of the Stone Age

In an interview with The Guardian, Queens of the Stone Age frontman, Josh Homme, described the debut Queens record as "trance music" and "something that girls could dance to," deliberately trying to step away from the very macho and very in-your-face approach of his previous band, legendary stoner rock pioneers, Kyuss. Kyuss was like a snarling dog: vicious, mean, and charged with a macho territorial aggression of a young band eager to prove itself. Queens may not lack aggression, but it's aggression of a different stripe. Whereas Kyuss records like Welcome to Sky Valley have power in their guitar, Queens' self-titled debut had a more laidback, intricate, at times almost beautiful quality to them. Instead of power, Queens of the Stone Age focuses on repetition and establishing a groove. The power in a song like "How to Handle a Rope (A Lesson in the Lariat)" is in the steadiness of its beat and how the song builds upon it. Homme called this "robot rock," and wanted Queens to be instantly recognizable upon the repetition of a specific kind of earworm riff. Unlike a lot of later Queens albums, the musicianship would be the centerpiece with the lyrics taking a backseat. 

That's not to say that the lyrics are unimportant, but they, along with the vocals, seem to be garnish to the music rather than any kind of focal point. The most obvious example of this is in the mixing of the record. Homme has stated that he feels, going back and listening to the record, like there's an audible apprehension. At the time, he was much more reluctant to step into the position of frontman and vocalist, and so the fact that the vocal track is seemingly buried under the instrumentation seems to be a symptom of that. But the result of this is that the ear hooks onto those robot rock riffs more easily since that's where the emphasis is placed. Diving into the lyrics almost serves the music more than the writing, they reinforce the feel of the song more than the subject matter. "You Can't Quit Me Baby" creeps and stalks and lumbers uneasily, never truly finding steady footing and keeping the listener on their toes. Little wonder that the lyrics deal with a toxic relationship-turned-obsession with a morbid conclusion. 

That being said, the subject matters of the songs tend to be very fleeting themselves. Later Queens records wouldn't exactly lay their meanings out on a silver platter, but with the lyrics much more prominent as time went on, they invited and evoked much more vivid imagery. Here, the subjects are more abstract, they go into less detail, they leave more to the imagination, and they give just enough for the mind to race with a mystical possibility. "Mexicola" is about a trip south of the border, and yet I don't ever feel like I have a tight grasp on the full meaning behind what's being said, and that's much to the song's benefit. We don't get a story, we get fleeting images, images of "a world that's full of shit and gasoline" and "velvet eyes in Mexico." There's danger around every corner, and all you have to guide you is an unrelenting drum beat and one of the grimiest and dankest bass riffs ever committed to tape. 

Elsewhere, and really throughout the entire album, you see what started as a very interesting relationship between the band and one of their favorite subjects: drugs. Later albums would deal with that aspect very head-on, but here, Queens is very non-confrontational with the topic. A song like "Walkin' on the Sidewalks" talks about drug trips and "You Would Know" speaks of devils with pills in their eyes, but there's no real heed paid to it. The drugs are simply there, not good, not bad, simply a fact of life. Their subsequent album, Rated R, would start to more directly deconstruct the band's association with narcotics, and their third record, Songs for the Deaf, would very directly address the risks of being too close to these kinds of substances. Modern Queens records usually don't even address it at all anymore. Here, though, it's treated as nonchalantly and as commonplace as a rattlesnake in the desert: leave it be and it won't hurt you.

The musicianship in general is truly what should be admired here. The aformentioned "How to Handle the Rope" has easily the most evocative and fuzziest guitar intro on the record, and after just a couple repeats, ends up stuck in your head all day. The drum line teases its way into the song, and once it gets going, it drives forward like a beat up pickup truck racing down a desert highway. "Hispanic Impressions," one of a few instrumental songs on the record, is a cacophony of stuttering drum crashes and guitar riffs that hardly gives you a chance to breathe. If there was anything on the record to rival the power of Kyuss, this might be it. "Spider and Vinegaroons," with was added in a reissue along with "The Bronze" and "These Aren't the Droids You're Looking For," is a spacey and very ethereal number that drops you into a soundscape with a lone guitar and a steady clapping to lead you forward. There's a sense of scale and the smallness of the listener when putting this one on. It almost sounds like if Queens was hired to compose something for an episode of the Twilight Zone. A track mentioned earlier, "The Bronze," starts off similarly to "Spiders and Vinegaroons" in its spaciness, but then catches the listener off guard, whisking them away into a rush of guitar and a blast of hot desert air. A lot of the riffs evoke that kind of blast of dust-filled desert air. "The Bronze" comes pretty early in the tracklist, essentially an admission that one should never think they know what to expect from Queens, and that surprise is their modus operandi. 

Perhaps the biggest surprise is the closer, "I Was a Teenage Hand Model." Past the admittedly bizarre title is probably the strangest track on the record, a track which pretty music completely abandons guitar for what sounds like a looping maraca, some bass, and a healthy dose of very strange synthesized computer sounds occasionally bleeping, blooping, and piano. Every now and then, some strange synths play on the fringes of the track, teasing where the track leads, but for most of it, it's surprisingly laidback. It's also probably the clearest Homme's vocals are on the whole record. Of course, what he's singing doesn't really make much sense. By the time we get to the last minute or so of the song, we're completely taken aback once the electronics that have been hiding in the background come in and hijack the track, turning a slow jam into what sounds like some kind of alien transmission, pulsating throughout until we get to the carrot at the end of the stick: a short phone message from Nick Oliveri, Queens' soon-to-be bassist who joined the band shortly after the album came out. It's a strange little easter egg to hide at the end of this record, and it's a nod towards what the band was looking forward to. The band was about to extend beyond the admittedly-wide grasp they'd established here. Queens had differentiated themselves from their predecessor, but they were still dwelling in the same deserts that birthed Kyuss. Looking forward, they'd chart their own path. There's a lot of ambition in this debut. There's a set style that they want to adhere to, but every now and then, you can see something bigger itching to get out. 

Revisiting The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour

Sometimes, it's easy to forget that games have come a long way since the early days, and no corner of the medium was as much of a wild west in its infancy as the early PC gaming scene. Back in 1993, PC gaming was barely in its infancy. Sure, there'd been a ton of early DOS and Apple computers that were playing baby's first role-playing games like Ultima or Wasteland, but it was only in the early 90's that the PC really seemed to start finding its foothold and started pushing technological limits, and one of those brand new innovations that the high and mighty consoles wouldn't catch up with for a few years was this magical new concept: a video game...on a CD! But of course, it's 1993, floppy discs are still the industry standard, and plus CD-ROM drives aren't exactly cheap, so you need a real killer app to get the kids bugging their parents until they get one of them new fangled CD drives. Enter the 7th Guest.

The 7th Guest came out at just the right time to be the big next step for PC gaming, especially in regards to bringing CD-ROM tech into the mainstream, even if it was somewhat overshadowed several months later by Myst which seems to be the better remembered of the two. But indeed, the 7th Guest graced PC gamers with its own unique brand of quasi-Gothic horror first and sold many a disc and many a CD drive to go along with it. Bill Gates even called it "the new standard in interactive entertainment," which, looking back at just how goofy looking this thing is, is kind of hilarious in hindsight. This was 1993 after all, and time has not exactly been kind to some of the really dated 3D graphics and some of the hokey acting in the live action cutscenes. Same goes for the story which is just kinda silly. Even for the time, I find it hard to imagine anyone taking this game as a "serious" horror story. 

Though, for what it's worth, once you look past some of the relics from the early 90's, the aesthetics of the 7th Guest are almost...classy? I mean, it's still pretty hokey to see a bad 3D rendered face slowly popping out of a painting, but the look and the atmosphere and the music betray the healthy amount of sincere love and care that went into capturing the feel of a good Gothic horror story. From ghostly apparitions appearing every so often to hint at a grander history to this abandoned house to a real solid sense of art design, every room feels legit and every room tells a story. And as far as story goes, it's probably the aspect that has aged the best aside from the atmosphere. The story, such as it is, follows 6 guests invited to an old mansion by a mysterious toymaker named Stauf. Stauf challenges them to solve the many puzzles in his house while also teasing a mystery behind a secret 7th guest to this grisly party, with the prize at the end being anything the guest desires. This story is presented as having already taken place, with it being slowly revealed as ghostly visions that slowly reveal what once took place in these now empty halls. Which is smart, for a number of reasons (the least of which being that the ghostly translucent effect helps hide some of the early-FMV artifacting), paramount of which is a real sense that this house is a massive and very dusty puzzle box that Stauf left behind, just waiting for the next piece to be revealed. And Stauf, the villain of the story and voice from above following you throughout, might sound like a total dweeb, but there's a delectable cheese in his every line that sometimes even evokes a campier Vincent Price (and considering Vincent Price, that's saying something). That being said, you better get used to that acting, cuz you'll be hearing Stauf a lot. Like, a lot a lot. He really likes to interrupt you while you're busy trying to figure these puzzles out. 

Which, speaking of, hits on probably the most antiquated and clunky part of the entire 7th Guest experience, that being the puzzles themselves. And it also betrays that, behind the sleek and appealing presentation, the real audience of fans for this game is closer to the Lucasarts Monkey Island crowd that the horror fans that would end up flocking to your Resident Evil's or Silent Hill's several years later. Because I'm not just talking about puzzles, I'm talking logic puzzles. A lot of logic puzzles. So many that they really start to wear on you after a while. And it's not that they're all mind-numbingly obtuse (just you wait for that), but more than a few are almost a little too simple. I hope you like moving chess pieces, cuz there's more than one chess themed around swapping chess pieces in specific orders. And while they're not all bad, the worst ones can get really grating. Especially this one puzzle towards the middle where you're moving these chess bishops with the objective of ending up with the white and black pieces switching their original positions. Sometimes they even throw one of those sliding picture puzzles at you, which feels like it's about the time they just gave up and threw in something you'd find in the kids section of a browser-based games website. That being said, there's some fun ones. Early on, there's a maze that actually had me breaking out a pen and paper to mark my route and had me marking up where the dead ends were and noting landmarks, so that was fun. By the end of the game, though, I was about done with this kind of stuff. Especially since the end ones can get so obtuse that I don't even quite understand what I'm doing. Fortunately, there's a hint book in the library that, if you click it enough times, it'll actually give you the option of skipping the puzzle entirely. Albeit, it's kind of annoying having to walk all the way back to the library if you run into a late game puzzle that just seems impossible, but beggar's can't be choosers, I guess. And at least I didn't find myself falling back on that until the end compared to how the sequel handled things.

The game's sequel, the 11th Hour, came out just two years after the 7th Guest, and it managed to do the impossible. It managed to take every single aspect of the original, do it more, and do it way way worse. The obtuse puzzles? Even more incomprehensible. Also there's more of them, along with a dumb "find-it" object game between the puzzles complete with some of the most nonsensical clues you could think of. The atmosphere? Taking place several decades after the original, the Gothic atmosphere has been replaced by...uh...old? There really isn't an aesthetic. You could be generous and say it's just a more generic version of the spook house, but it's the same map just with more cobwebs and a more ruined look to the place. The story? Somehow even dumber and cheesier than the original with none of the class of that original story. The ghostly cutscenes have been replaced by fully scripted FMV movies you watch on a little screen that serves as your main menu, featuring a story that looks like it was shot with a budget of a ham sandwich. On the making-of documentaries that come with the game, they talked about how they wanted a more adult story with fully realized characters, but the result looks like something that the MST3K crew would have a field day with. Some of the most forgettable stock characters with the goofiest one-liners, the most slap-dashed editing job, and without the translucent effect, the early-90's artifacting on the video makes it look terrible. The one perk is that having a little PDA device as your menu means that the hint book is now with you at all times, and believe me, some of these puzzles are so goddamn convoluted and tedious that you'll end up falling back on the old "click it until it lets you skip it" more often than you'll be proud of. Fortunately Stauf's omniscient narration stays quiet most of the time, but it doesn't help you feel like like an idiot. All the personality that defined the original has been sacrificed for an artificial sense of challenge and an attempt to be "edgy" in the storytelling department that wouldn't even qualify as good enough for an episode of Goosebumps, let alone the Bill Gates-approved new standard of entertainment. Not to mention the really REALLY goofy song called "Mr. Death" that plays on the startup screen, which...okay honestly the song is kind of bad in a hilarious and fun way.

What's sad about that is that, while the 7th Guest's aesthetic wasn't exactly unique especially after it came out and wowed the industry, it arguably pulled it off better than a lot of the competition. It somehow straddled the line between a goofy early-90's PC romp and a genuine attempt at something approaching vaguely artful. And yes I would describe something with the goofiest acting in the universe to be "artful" to an extent. Seriously, the clip that plays when Stauf asks if you're "feeling...loooooooooooooooonelyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy????" is the funniest shit I've heard in a PC game, and I'm not entirely sure it was unintentional. Just don't go in hoping for an entirely rewarding gameplay experience. The 7th Guest is a relic, and that's more of an endorsement than it may sound. It's a historical artifact worthy of further study and worthy of the time and effort that went into its creation. It's not really a tone or an atmosphere that we even really attempt anymore, so what the heck, if you have a couple of hours to kill and you don't mind having to have a walkthrough on your phone handy, check it out. Just don't expect too much from the sequel. 

RS 500 Album Review: 491. Born Under a Bad Sign (1967) by Albert King

Born Under a Bad Sign is the album that put Albert King on the map as a recording artist, and it’s also a bit of a deceptive record. King himself only has writing credits on two of the album’s 11 tracks, but don’t mistake this for King leaning on the work of other musicians and writers. King effectively wrangles these songs like runaway bulls and leaves his mark on them, making many of these tunes iconic. Some of these songs have more famous versions, like I Almost Lost My Mind by Ivory Joe Hunter or Kansas City which was recorded just three years earlier by the Beatles. But none of these earlier renditions seem to give King any pause or any doubt. Kansas City gets reworked by King as a slightly lower key tune compared to the Beatles version or even the earlier Little Richard version, but it’s no less smooth and seductive. On the seductive note, King also brings a dirty rendition of Crosscut Saw, where he brags about his...ahem, fantastic saw, and how he’s gonna drag it all over his woman’s wood, if you catch my drift. The wordplay is really clever, but it’s the weeping guitar that keeps the heart of this track pumping. Of course, one should be careful not to discount the work being done by King’s backing band. The Hunter and As the Years Go By both highlight the talented musicians King is working with here, especially on that latter track with the just fantastic horns and saxophone provided some much needed flair to his largely traditional blues. King and his band both bring their A-game and craft some of the best blues this side of the Mississippi.

Rating: 3.5/5

RS 500 Album Review: 492. Touch (1983) by Eurythmics

“Deus ex machina” is a term which literally means “god from the machine” in Latin. Eurythmics’ Touch, I would describe as anima ex machina, translated as “soul from the machine.” Indeed, soul and rhythm and depth is what lead singer, Annie Lennox, pulls from the synthesizers and pulsating beats of this album, from the very opening spider-like notes of Here Comes the Rain to the closing bleeps and bloops covering a looming bass in Paint a Rumour. This album does two things very very right. One is a vast variety of sounds and textures pulled out of their synths, and what few live instruments were available. Most, though not all, of this came from the silent man behind the curtain, Dave Stewart, who handled much of the production. Stylistically, this means that the album includes a cascade of different styles of electronica and new wave. The other half is the sheer muscle put behind Lennox’s vocals, and she brings much of the life to tracks. And her voice knows as few bounds as the music, swinging from the sexy and dangerous Regrets to the longing Who’s That Girl to the bombastic and almost joyous Right By Your Side, a song that takes a musically more tropical aesthetic. Her voice even ends up as much of an instrument as any other, especially on the song No Fear, No Hate, No Pain (No Broken Hearts), where her vocals seem to pulsate as much as the synths that back it. Aesthetically, the album is cold to the touch, but with such a warm embrace, and such a great example of 80’s synthpop and new wave at some of its best.

Rating: 3.5/5

RS 500 Album Review: 493. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002) by Wilco

After lord knows how many listens, I’m still not sure if I’ve listened to this enough times to really accurately put my finger on what I think about this record. It’s also a record that swings from some very notable styles to another, from alt-country to lo-fi to a popier style, and usually on a dime between songs. The opener, I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, opens with a very chaotic and sloppy playing style the betrays the utter heartbreak in the lyrics. Lead singer, Jeff Tweedy, assures us that he’s trying to break our heart. It’s clear that the real heartbreak is the other way around. On the sadder end of the spectrum, Radio Cure takes that heartache and adds distance. Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but as he sings, “distance has no way/of making love understandable.” Heartbreak and sorrow is peppered throughout the album on tracks like Jesus, Ect and I’m the Man Who Loves You, but the album has a very playful side to it, and perhaps even a very conscious side.Tracks like Kamera and Heavy Metal Drummer have a much stronger hook to them that makes them a lot more of an earworm. War on War combines a very catchy main hook with a double entendre about the fight for peace in the world and in a relationship, and how turbulent those can be. Ashes of American Flags gets even deeper into the social aspect, with Tweedy singing about the mundanity of life and how hard it is to find anything meaningful to connect to. And despite the record being recorded before the events of 9/11, there’s something haunting as he sings of burning American flags on this song, or with shaking buildings and smoke imagery in Jesus, Ect. Tonally, a lot of it, both in its lyrics and even in some of the electronic backing lightly used as garnish on many of these tracks evokes a weird hybrid of OK Computer, Kid A, and Amnesiac, all wrapped into one huge burrito of indie alt-country. Ashes of American Flags and Poor Places especially make very interesting use of what sounds like radio static and interference giving this sense of underlying uneasiness. Poor Places closes its drone of electronica with a radio transmission repeating the album title over and over. The album closer, Reservations, is the album’s longest track, and to keep up the Radiohead comparisons, it reminds me a lot of a much longer version of Motion Picture Soundtrack, and that’s not a bad thing at all. The very warm but unnerving drones coalescing with the vocals makes for a really interesting closer, and one that goes on even after the vocals drop out. It’s a very unconventional end to what could really only be described as an unconventional album. And one that might really grow on me as time goes on.

Rating 4/5

RS 500 Album Review: 494. Oracular Spectacular (2007) by MGMT

And now, for something completely different. Indeed, MGMT’s dreamy psychedelic pop listens like little else. At times, seeming like a more coherent Animal Collective, at others, it's own thing entirely. Oracular Spectacular swings for the fences musically, but makes sure not to lose sight of the core of their music: melody and harmony. I mentioned Animal Collective, a group of which I am not a fan of at all, and one of their biggest problems is they get too lost in experimentation and lose track of any kind of melody, and MGMT purposefully does not do that. Many tracks like Time to Pretend or Electric Feel are built on the backs of melody, and very pretty ones at that. Kids is easily the most recognizable single off the record, and that one displays the kind of pop ecstasy that the record can hit. Despite that, MGMT doesn’t forget to experiment with their keyboards, with 4th Dimensional Transition being one of the most experimental tracks on the record. But unlike a more avant-garde act, MGMT doesn’t lose sight of the core of its songs. It always feels like there’s a method to the madness, and it makes the cascade of sound all the more interesting to explore. The vocals on the record are particularly interesting, with the effects that are layered on them making them almost more like another instrument instead of lyrics to try to listen to. Not that you can really hear much of what they’re saying if you were trying to listen, but regardless, it accomplishes what it sets out to do. The whirring and echoing beats of the Handshake end the record on a more experimental note, and ties the record together very neatly. While the last quarter or so is probably the least interesting from a pure pop standpoint, it shows a bit more of the group’s versatility and how weird they can get with their sounds. Of Moons, Birds & Monsters is a particular favorite from the tail end. Overall, it’s a damn fine psychedelic pop record.

Rating: 3.5/5

RS 500 Album Review: 495. Give It Up (1972) by Bonnie Raitt

Slickly produced and soulfully performed, Give It Up is the blues and blues rock as dressed up as it really ever should be. Raitt handles herself with grace, but doesn’t deny the genre its signature down-home grit and spittle. And with Raitt on the reins of the guitar, she’s got her finger on the musical pulse of this record. Not that she’s the only one pulling her weight or anything. Under the Falling Sky (a nice Jackson Browne cover) wouldn’t have near the heft it does without that drum and harmonica powering it like a steam train, and the electric backing Raitt on Love Me Like a Man provide as much power as anything else. The sax on Nothing Seems to Matter also brings a nice smokey nighttime feel. But the heart of this record is Raitt’s amazing voice and her amazing guitar work, like on the opener, Give It Up Or Let Me Go. Too Long At the Fair also highlights Raitt as a songwriter, with her pious lyrics painting a very vivid picture that her guitar can’t alone. And while I won’t pretend that Raitt doesn’t occasionally slip into the same Boz Scaggs trap of sounding perhaps a bit too familiar for their own good, there’s more style to Raitt’s personal brand of the blues. A track like You Got to Know How is a blues track distinguished by its unique style in bringing in a clarinet and a very Old West-type piano to accompany Raitt and co. I won’t lie, I don’t really foresee myself really returning to this record that frequently, if at all, but for what it’s worth, it’s definitely a good one.

Rating: 3.5/5