We're hostages of geography

Continuing my trip back through the 2017 album charts.

01/09/17 : Villains - Queens Of The Stone Age


Our fourth visit with QOTSA and my previous reactions have been indifference, aversion and mild appreciation - so we could be anywhere with this!

Hmmm - they sound like they're going for a David Bowie/T Rex 70s-ish sound on this. And, whilst it's certainly not a sound I know that well, I feel like they've achieved a certain amount of success with it. I can't say I loved it, but it was an interesting enough listen which I can see people could get into (and possibly even me, given a few more listens) - whether the QOTSA fans did is less clear to me, but I guess Wikipedia will let me know.

We're at #1 in the charts with a new entry this week on the start of a nine week run, which feels about what it deserved. The rest of the top five are Ed Sheeran, The War On Drugs (a new entry), PVRIS (another one - and I like a bit of PVRIS so might check this out) and Shane Filan (a third) with one more new entry in the top ten for Fifth Harmony (#10). 

Wikipedia tells us this is their seventh album and it's produced by Mark Ronson, which doesn't seem like an obvious mix to me, particularly when you consider the sound they came up with. There's a couple of larger sections in there - one on the background, which contains nothing of interest and one on the artwork, which is remarkably pretentious. Critically, most people were pretty nice about it but, surprisingly, it's really only a negative review from Under The Radar that mentions the retro style. It made quite a few year-end lists and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Rock Album, but lost to The War On Drugs offering that also debuted this week. However, checking out various "QOTSA albums ranked" pages, it's fair to say, as I expected, that it's not a fan favourite but it did very well commercially globally, getting to #1 in Australia, Canada, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal and Switzerland and #3 in the US.

discogs.com tells us that you're going to have to spend £8 to get a decent copy of this but if you want the HMV 100th anniversary rerelease from '21 which is a yellow transparent double LP, then it's going to set you back £65. This album was a lot more interesting than I was expecting - it was a very different sound from their rockier affairs.

08/09/17 - Intensely forgettable

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

And all at once I owned the earth and sky

Image
A new year to start the New Year - starting my trip back through the 2001 album charts. 30/12/01 : Swing When You're Winning -   Robbie Williams There's a reasonable argument I should reject this album, but it was such a surprising cultural moment that even I don't feel I can, so it means we're starting the year with one that "we" own. This is our fifth visit with Mr Williams - I'm determined not to enjoy it, but I also have to admit I'm not going to hate it nearly as much as I would like to.  You know what? This is perfectly fine. Completely inessential, but he's not doing anyone any harm. For the most part, it's classic Sinatra-or-thereabouts tracks which Robbie does a decent job with on the vocals (along with some slightly peculiar guests) and they've obviously got some decent musicians in to lay down the backing tracks. He rarely does anything wildly original with them but, most importantly, he doesn't ruin them either - I don't...
Read more

I wanna keep the door from closing, yeah

Image
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 26/12/25 : I Barely Know Her - Sombr Christmas week gives us some odd albums - last year we had Lana del Rey's album from '12, which hasn't left the chart all year. I'm pleased to say we're somewhat more up to date this year with an album that came out in August - I met it as a new entry  and was somewhat nonplussed by it, but I have mentioned it a couple of times since because it's just not gone away, which is somewhat unusual. So let's see what I make of it on a second listen (this trick totally failed to convince me of the virtues of Addison Rae earlier today). Well, well, well - Sombr at least intrigues on second listen. I'd struggle to describe it - it's kinda poppy indie with a woozy vibe to it, but it feels like it has depths to it and I reckon the more you listen to it, the more you pick up on. Intriguing indeed - I'd love to tell you more but that's all I got for the time ...
Read more

Ciara, be nice, and you wear too much foundation

Image
Continuing my trip up The Guardian's  50 best albums of 2025 . #2 :  EURO-COUNTRY - CMAT Despite its fraught creation, CMAT’s third album sounds like the supremely assured work of a songwriter whose powers have reached a new peak. It is, by turns, poignant, moving, furiously angry, uproariously funny and packed with incredible tunes. It strides confidently away from the country-infused style she minted on her 2022 debut If My Wife New I’d Be Dead – into territory that variously touches on jazz (Janis Joplining), raging alt-rock (The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station), soul-kissed pop (Running/Planning; Take a Sexy Picture of Me) – without in any way losing the essence of what made her successful in the first place. The 24th album I've previously heard and when I met this as a new entry (in the same week I met Sabrina Carpenter and Blood Orange  which also made this list), I described it as "interestingly cryptic" so it will be intriguing to see what I make of it on a seco...
Read more