Tag: rock

Album Review: Queens Of The Stone Age – Villains

By Oliver Butler (@notoliverbutler)

Film fanatics! You know those films where there’s airy, dramatic synth as the protagonist walks across a high, barrier-less bridge, to meet their fate? Imagine that they’ve done that, and they’re about to open this grand, tall doorway, and instead of meeting their nemesis or Dumbledore or some bollocks like that, they open the door to find Queens of the Stone Age throwing a raucous, rowdy shindig? That’s exactly how Feet Don’t Fail Me opens their brand new record, Villains. Strolling out of the desert, this is an insanely dancey record that doesn’t put a foot wrong, and with Mark Ronson producing this record, you can really feel the groove as your feet start to move.

Unsurprisingly, firstly because it’s QotSA, the two singles released in the run up to the release of Villains, The Way You Used to Do and The Evil Has Landed (the song titles don’t get shorter), were was very promising in terms of quality, and the sound that they’d be going for, which feels like an old-school rock sound, with that fuzzy, driven sound that’s synonymous with Queens of the Stone Age, along with epic, eerie and ethereal synth being thrown into the mix. Pretty standard stuff, but QotSA know a thing or two about high standards.

Compact in the number of tracks, it’s just nine songs long, but each one is a blockbuster, an epic or a dirty, funky groove that’s bound to get you moving. It’s been a long time since …Like Clockwork, but Villains makes the four year wait well worth it.

Killer riffs form a foundation for an album that’s actually… a dance album, if that sounds right? Not dance as in EDM, but the sort of dancing you’d find in Grease, except Queens of the Stone Age are the rowdy greaser gang, getting up to no good, punching people with guitars and what have you.

Two of the best tracks on the album are right at the start and right at the end, with Feet Don’t Fail Me being the epic opener designed to get you groovin’, with Villains of Circumstance being the long, slow, emotional ending. It moodily sits at the bar, sipping whiskey, sucking on cigarettes and suffering. It’s not the usual fare you expect from QotSA, but it fits into the same category as tracks such as Vampyre of Time and Memory and Mosquito Song; those heavy, emotional songs that bring a darkness into your mind. Lyrics like “Close your eyes and dream me home, forever mine, I’ll be forever yours” are dark, poignant and tell a tale of someone who’s lost their love.

Ronson’s Rowdy Rock Production has really added something to this album. It’s retained that classic QotSA sound, assumedly because Josh Homme is a man who takes no shit and would have easily chokeslammed Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch through his own decks if the tried to overhaul QotSA, but the funky feel to it, with the long, deep emotional songs turning every song into an epic on its own merits. For instance, Head Like a Haunted House feels like it’s come straight out of the 60s & the 70s, with a real surf rock vibe to it, but has that dirty, fuzzed up QotSA feel to it that funks you sideways.

Un-Reborn Again is a track with weird synth and punching guitar, and is, without getting too excited about this album, is another blockbuster. Hideaway is a driving, bluesy track, Domesticated Animals comes right out of the QotSA textbook, and Fortress is cut from the same cloth as Villains of Circumstance, a slow, emotional track that gets into your head whilst pulling at your heart strings.

More than anything, this is a front to back, side to side, up and down enjoyable album. Perfect? It’ll never be Songs for the Deaf, but it gets incredibly close to reaching that bar. And when a band’s being going for song long, it gets harder and harder to bring out a quality album, something Josh Home and the Dancin’ Queens have been able to do this time.

Pleasantly surprising, full of funk, dance, emotion, riffs and power, Villains might just be one of the best albums you’ll listen to this year. They needn’t worry about their feet failing them.

9/10

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Track Review: Babe Punch – Stanford

By Liam Menzies (@blnkclyr)

CW: Rape

Punk has always been the counter-culture genre, standing up for the little man as the privileged establishment rule from their ivory tower. However, it’s only been recently that we’ve seen a real rise in the number of female fronted bands in the scene, wielding their guitars, drums and mics, ready to throw a punch or two while sounding fucking sick in the process.

Welcome to the stage Babe Punch, a Nottingham/Derby punk outfit who, to put it lightly, are fucking sick of their fellow women being abused, undermined and generally being mistreated. A recent case that fuels their rage drenched single Stanford is the Brock Turner rape case, an example of not only victim blaming due to the woman in question being intoxicated but a chilling reminder of how being a white man with power can get you away with just about anything.

“Golden boy/ Daddy’s golden boy” is just one line of many that will be familiar to those who have paid a hint of attention to social media with most mainstream publications tending to side with the perpetrator: even Brock’s own father vomited out a “20 minutes of action” quote, further enforcing the rape culture that surrounds us. The menacing guitars do a great job of putting the listener into a similar state as a victim: slowly alluring the listener into a falsely secure environment before pouncing, brandishing a vexed set of screaming.

Tracks that touch upon social issues can easily be brushed off as just repeating a narrative or trying to enforce a viewpoint but Babe Punch complete the difficult task of not only discussing relevant and important issues but making them sound fucking great in the process.

9/10

Track Review: Queens Of The Stone Age – The Evil Has Landed

By Oliver Butler (@notoliverbutler)

Oh, like The EAGLE Has Landed. Haha. That’s funny.

Back with another single off the imminently arriving Villains, Queens of the Stone Age have treated us to another track, this time in the form of a classic QotSA slow-but-heavy, The Evil Has Landed.

As soon as that dirty, filthy, mmph yeah, octaved riff kicks in, you know that you’re planted firmly in Homme territory. It does, of course, help that Mark Ronson is producing this album, but nonetheless, it’s that familiar sound that feels like you’re getting a Thai massage from Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, and with QotSA, you know there’ll be a happy ending.

Whilst two tracks does not an album make, both this and The Way You Used to Do are very positive signs as to how Villains will look, sound and feel. The Evil Has Landed is a bluesy slow jam, with growing, whining guitar bends aplenty, ideal for getting that slow headbanging on the go as you tap your foot and slide down into the very depths of this song, sort of like a rough riding version of Alan’s Deep Bath from I’m Alan Partridge. Let’s just finish your neck off now with some final suds. Mmmmm!

But towards the end of the song, the slow jam pulls you out of the bath as you’re thrown into a hard ‘n’ rockin’ finish, making it feel like a song of two halves. The bluesy slow jam at the start, and the struttin’ rock-out-with-your-cock out at the end. You’ve literally been given two songs for the price of one here. That’s the kind of people Queens of the Stone Age are.

Not to paint this song in a negative light, but there’s nothing special about this song. There’s no real talking point, apart from a Spanish-ish rolled ‘r’ from Josh Homme towards the end. Sounds a bit like “Rrrrrrow!”. The ending of the song is great, even if the first half was bad, it’d be saved by the end of the song. Whilst there’s no massive talking point about this song, that’s not a bad thing, it’s just a rockin’ track from QotSA, the kind we’ve come to expect from them over the years. It’s just fantastic. It’s a platter of tasty riffs and mini solos to fill you to the brim. It sounds mean, somewhat unapologetic, like it’s about to take a swing at you.

If the rest of Villains sounds like the two tracks that have already broken cover, QotSA may just well top the brilliance that was …Like Clockwork, but at the very least, will bring out one of the most enjoyable albums this year. It might not be special, but The Evil Has Landed will certainly get you up, moving and rocking.

8/10

Album Review: Fangclub – S/T

By Gregor Farquharson (@Gregoratlantic)

Irish rockers Fangclub have been around for 4 years now and are starting to form a great reputation in their homeland’s rock scene as well as in the UK. Their Bullet Head and Coma Happy EP’s were relatively successful and led them to support some big name artists, such as Twin Atlantic and Frank Carter. Having just dropped their debut LP, it’s safe to say that the garage rock outfit are set to have a bigger and brighter future ahead of them.

Intro track Bullet Head is a track that has already became a favourite amongst fans, having featured on their debut EP, and is the perfect way to show listeners what Fangclub are all about – opening with a hard riff, and a rough chorus, the song is the ideal way for the band to kick things off. Succeeding track Role Models continues this high octane action, throwing in some crashing drums into the equation that sound perfect, perfectly sounding for the band. While both songs may sound very similar, it ends up feeling like a sonically cohesive introduction to the band that packs a punch.

Songs like Lightning, again, very much sound similar to what we are used to from the band, yet still show some elements of new sound, with higher pitched guitar tones being just one fresh element out of many. Lead single Bad Words is probably the strongest on the album, the powerful yet catchy riff being perfect for tiny, sweat fest shows and the vocals fit the feel of the song completely. The drums are another key aspect of this track, with crashing cymbals playing a key role in making the song what it is. Best Fake Friend perfectly showcases the rough side to the band, with gritty vocals really coming through on the chorus of the song. Drums also play a huge role in this track, perfectly setting the feel and tone of the track throughout.

Common Ground has a Foo Fighters like feel, quite like some B-side off Wasting Light. The guitar tones and vocals play a key element in making the track what it is. Better To Forget is a very strong and very well polished track from the band, with its huge chorus and unique tone, the track is surely set to be a fan favourite. The album is rounded off with the much slower Animal Skin, a track with very played out guitars and drums, and mellow vocals, a very fitting end to what is a highly anticipated album. Fangclub have managed not to stumble on their first full length record, something that many acts wish they could have done. While it may not be breaking any new ground, it kicks things off perfectly for the up and coming act, making it likely that we’ll see more of the band in the near future.

7/10

Album Review: Big Thief – Capacity

By Sean Hannah (@Shun_Handsome)

Despite existing on seemingly disparate musical strata, hip-hop and indie rock share more common ground than one might presume. Both genres, generally speaking, tend to feature lyrics that serve to perpetuate distinct personae for their respective artists, with hip-hop espousing delusions of grandeur and indie rock false humility and overzealous self-deprecation. Artists from either camp who indulge too blithely in these tropes tend to catch flak from audiences and critics alike; materialistic, hyper-masculine rappers are written off as tacky or contrived while lugubrious rock singers are dismissed as unconvincing and unnecessary.

Though Brooklyn-based Big Thief fall into the latter category, their self-effacement is hardly disingenuous and their keen lyrics suggest a kinship with some of hip-hop’s more inspired songwriters. On Capacity, Big Thief’s sophomore LP, the group deliver a reassuring continuation of the sound that so frequently impressed on their debut Masterpiece and refines the poetic lyricism of front-woman Adrianne Lenker, which effortlessly conflated unyielding sincerity with gut-wrenching viscera.

Similarly to Masterpiece, Capacity meshes together the warm guitar sound of late-‘60s/early-‘70s roots rock and garage music’s characteristically unpolished veneer. “Shark Smile,” a Springsteenian tale of geographical travel and personal travail, incorporates a CCR-inspired chord progression to quell the disquiet of the song’s paroxysmal intro. On more subdued tracks like “Black Diamonds,” the lightly-distorted instrumentation butters up the otherwise dry album’s even-tempered musicianship (thanks to unsung heroes Buck Meek, Max Oleartchik, and James Krivchenia). But that’s not to say that the quieter songs falter without this roughness. The record’s opener “Pretty Things,” with its gentle finger-picked guitar arpeggios, would be perfectly in place as a McCartney or Lennon ballad on The White Album but for its inimitable lyrical content courtesy of Lenker. Soft or loud, Big Thief can sustain an intensity that lesser bands could only hope to achieve.

As a lyricist, Lenker places the listener just outside of the intimacy of her songs’ characters. Her words conversational and personal, Lenker’s songs sounds like private interactions we’ve entered in on, yet from which we haven’t been shooed. Take “Haley” for example, whose lines “Just like how it used to be, Haley/ Kicking around, burying letters we wrote” capture the sanguine nostalgia of childhood friendship despite the distinct non-universality of the scene. Even if the memory isn’t accessible to everyone, the bond between these two characters is.

Perhaps Capacity’s most pored-over song is “Mythological Beauty” due to its reportedly autobiographical third verse, but the verse preceding this highly-discussed stanza truly bespeaks Lenker’s talent for crafting lyrics. Referring to her mother’s venture into young parenthood, the line “Seventeen, you took his cum and you gave birth to your first life” evinces Lenker’s aptitude for writing lyrics that are frank without becoming crass, personal but not indulgent. In this regard, she’s like Frank Ocean, another songwriter who may similarly speak bluntly in his songs, yet remain stoic enough not to render a line licentious or trite. Lenker’s air of aloofness is facilitated in part by her Karen Carpenter-like penchant for keeping an even-tempered voice throughout these songs in spite of the sensationalist subject matter therein. Singing the affirmation “I am a beautiful bird, fluttered and floating” on the album’s title track, Lenker barely rises above the song’s mix, opting instead for a more furtive tone in her vocals. Her voice may be meek, but her ideas aren’t.

Thematically, much of the album deals with the confrontation (or lack thereof) of trauma; “You can wake up now, Mama/ From your protective coma,” Lenker sings on “Coma,” describing the harrowing situation of a woman feigning sleep to withstand a (presumably sexual) assault. “I can feel the numbness accompanying my plight,” from “Mary,” likewise describes the employment of unhealthy disengagement as a transitory coping mechanism for abjection. Other times, the band depict intrepidness as a means of conquering distress, as in the line “Kissing on the vampire, Kissing on the werewolf/ We have no enemies” from “Objects.” Singing in the first or second person, Lenker explores with adept laconicism highly personal accounts of tragedy, far beyond the lightweight clichés of unrequited love and perennial ennui that’s become well-trod territory in the indie rock community. As such, a more apt lyrical comparison might be to Earl Sweatshirt, whose ever-increasing terseness also explores personal issues (alcoholism, drug addiction, parental abandonment) with unflinching honesty and a proclivity for astute self-reflection.

Though Capacity never loses focus or control of its larger narrative, it suffers the pitfalls of a group whose musical identity is such that significant deviation would jar listeners, leaving it rooted in a fully developed, yet oft-repeated sound that lags in places on the album’s latter half. The rustic instrumentation of “Haley,” while appropriate among the song’s bucolic imagery, fails to keep the track afloat and instead marks it as nondescript. The same is true of “Black Diamonds” inasmuch as its tried and true guitar/bass/drums paradigm reduces the closing track to a modest gesture rather than a grand statement more apropos of the album’s previous heart-rending content.

To be sure, there are no bad songs on Capacity; the album is a warm, ruminative exploration of personal strife and triumph with far more successes than failures, yet its musical consistency at times stymies it from achieving notability on each cut. Still, Big Thief are perceptive and intuitive enough to compensate for these minor shortcomings, and Capacity serves as a confirmation that the brilliance they displayed on Masterpiece wasn’t just beginner’s luck.

8/10

EP Review: Broad-Shouldered Baby – I Must Be Tired

By Liam Menzies (@blnkclyr)

It would probably surprise you to hear that despite the abundance of music projects available on the internet, only a hand few seem to ever reference this in some shape or form. What wouldn’t surprise you is that out of those artists that have, Tom Fraser can raise his hand and say he has. To those that know Fraser, or happen to follow him on his twitter, his wit and humour is one of the first features of his that will pop to mind: after all, we’re talking about the man whose twitter name is an infusion of a Channel 4 presenting duo and the person responsible for the death of Jesus Christ.

Fraser is not a one trick pony though, currently playing in Codist as a drummer and backing vocalist, two contributions that helped their debut LP Nuclear Family to be one of the best records of last year. Now the spotlight is finally upon him as he has a stab at the big bad music world with his project Broad-Shouldered Boy, dropping the first EP under this moniker I Must Be Tired (see, that intro wasn’t a waste after all!).

While it could be easy to let the pressure topple Fraser over, his solo efforts stand firmly on their own, embedding his own unique quirkiness into the staple bedroom pop/rock template that makes for one of the most refreshing listens of the year so far. An essential example of this would be the second track Trunk, a song that focuses more on a giant grey elephant than the boot of a car. Stomping along at a steady pace with its bellowing drums, Fraser’s silky vocals adorned with a Scottish tinge lead as he sings about insecurities and paranoia, outright mentioning the EP’s title to touch upon the exhaustion these feelings have caused.

It reaches its peak as Trunk approaches its climax, Fraser naturally warping his voice into this deep narration to detail this metaphor for this anxiety (The elephant is in the room, has its trunk around my neck), a moment that highlights Fraser’s knack for making emotions that countless artists talk about into something truly special.

It really is Fraser’s vocals and lyrics that make I Must Be Tired such an essential listen though that’s not to say the instrumentals are drab or dull by any means. Following on from the aforementioned track featuring a large grey mammal, Cake is a far slower number that features layer upon layer though is juxtaposingly sombre in tone, reaching a turbulent conclusion which includes a spine chilling piano feature alongside a timid projection of Fraser’s vocals. This mixing pot of wit, lyricism and an undeniable talent helps Broad Shouldered Boy to stand out in a scene that feels over-saturated quite frequently.

Finishing off with that staple acoustic number, there’s a real feeling of The Hotelier with the running inclusion of a simplistic lyric and the different sound it evokes as seen on Goodness (I see the moon, the moon sees me) . Broad Shouldered Boy is a dangerous project due to it traversing the fine line of bedroom pop, a genre that is traditionally very safe: using that appealing sound and infusing it with many of the traits Fraser embodies, I Must Be Tired comes off as one of 2017’s strongest EPs. The future is looking bright for Fraser’s venture though he could do with a rest – he must be tired.

8.5/10