CD reviews
QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE
Villains QUEENS of the Stone Age tend to zig when people expect a zag. Their last album was brooding and pensive, but Villains is a different beast. Too much has been made of pop, rock, hip-hop producer Mark Ronson working the boards in the studio. Villains is not a QoTSA dance venture. Their hips are not wriggling. Yes, the album swings more than the last. It has faster moments, but let’s not get carried away. Folks seem to think Ronson gave Josh Homme and Co his Amy Winehouse/ Bruno Mars brass-led makeover. Stop it. There is a saxophone on the album (gasp!), but it doesn’t ruin the rock ’n’ roll. Let’s call this album what it is: brilliant. It is the best rock album I’ve heard in ages. There are some songs here — on album number seven — that stack up favourably against their weighty back catalogue. The slow-building Fortress is equally gloomy and beautiful guitar-pop;
Domesticated Animals shows off some strutting blues-rock; then Head Like a
Haunted House delivers a dash of punk mixed with camp fun.
The Way You Used to Do is a cracking single with its hand claps, stop-start structure and butt-kicking swagger. It. Is. So. Good. Across the album the drums are punchy and the guitars are perfectly sludgy, crystalline or thunderous, depending on the tune. There are just nine songs, but six of them stretch out to five or six minutes, which is just long enough for the band to show off their expertise and precision.
ACTION BRONSON
Blue Chips 7000 CHEF, rapper, TV host, author. Is there anything Action Bronson can’t do? With a name that nods to his early career mix-tapes, Blue Chips 7000 sounds futuristic at face value, but it’s actually a very retro-sounding record, like the old days when rap beats were made by chopping up soul, funk, R&B, lounge or rock music. Lyrically it is on par with everything he has done. Loose and free-flowing, Bronson likes to brag and to be humble. He’s also funny, not as in “jokes”, but more in that he says weird and fun things about fancy food, sport or pop culture. With his “stomach like Buddha”, I LOL-ed when he repeats over and over “I’d give my right lung if I could dunk a basketball one time…” on My Right Lung. Sure, Bronson. On a kid-sized hoop? The album is peppered with little details like the people recorded off-the-cuff, very much like his show on Vice. On La Luna he raps over the hold music for a car service. Halfway through the sound is elevated, beefed up. It’s not different, it’s better. And it gives a little insight into the way his inspiration comes from everything around him. The snappy Let Me Breathe is the only song that feels truly modern, but it is eclipsed by the low-key funk of Tank with Big Body Bes, and the smooth, luxurious 9-24-7000 with Rick Ross.