Queens of the Stone Age @ Brooklyn Masonic Temple June 7th 2013

I haven't seen Queens in about ten years. Mostly because they started playing larger venues, partly because I no longer really felt connected to their music. Era Vulgaris fell a little flat for me, despite having some great tracks on it, and I couldn't get into Them Crooked Vultures. Queens slid to the backburner, and, eventually, to the bottom of the pile. And they're honestly just better than that, and I'm not sure why I stopped listening to them completely. When the new album was released, I was interested, but not in a rush to hear it. As luck would have it, I managed to get a ticket to their 'surprise' show in Brooklyn last Friday, and suddenly felt a little more motivated. I don't have a clip from the show, so please enjoy this fourteen minute vehicle for double guitar solos while you read.

...Like Clockwork (hereafter just "the album" because that is awkward as hell to put into a sentence), is good, better than the last record. Strange in places, and in a new way for them. Softer at first glance, and extremely personal. But I'm not here to talk about the album, and these songs are not soft live. They're dark and seething, and the spite and regret are palpable in the air and on the unusually earnest and personal vocal turn from Homme, though this sort of thing has become a lot more usual for him as time has gone on. But more on that in a minute. 

The venue is oddly shaped, dark, with red lamps dotted around the room, and was crowded by the time I arrived, schlepping over an hour in an epic tropical downpour, with mixed feelings about seeing a familiar band for the first time in a decade, my thirty-second birthday looming in two weeks, and pants wet to my knees. It was so packed that I could not get near the stage (or maybe I've just gotten old, and didn't try hard enough), so I took up a spot behind the sound desk, where I could see that the setlist had only the new album, in order, written out on it. And, as advertised, that's what we got, followed by Millionaire, No One Knows, and Song for the Dead. All three have been live favorites of the band for years, but I think it's telling that they're also all from Songs for the Deaf, arguably their best work and definitely their best album for live material. This album, too, really shines in live performance, in the way only really Queens and a few other bands ever really seem to achieve. Queens is an unusually tight live performer - I swear I've never heard a flubbed note at any show, unless you count that one time at Lupo's when Joey Castillo was drumming for them for the first time and missed a few cues. I remember being impressed by how professional they were, and how quickly he was picking up the songs - the drums in Queens are hardly straightforward. Joey is out, but Jon Theodore (Mars Volta) was more than satisfactory as a replacement for either Castillo or Grohl (who drums on the new album), and I did not feel their absence. Castillo being gone had been my biggest concern. After being slow to take to him at first, he had eventually become one of my favorite live drummers. Thankfully, I clearly had nothing to worry about.

Queens of the Stone Age at Brooklyn Masonic Temple, June 7th, 2013

Concern number two was the material, which was still new to me - how would it play live? And I was surprised by the answer. It was...the only word I can come up with is poignant, which is awful. And I don't mean the feeling of seeing them again, the nostalgia I was experiencing - I mean the music dripped with poignancy. With melodrama. The kind that you know is over the top, but you don't care and you can't help yourself, because you're just that lost in whatever you think your saga is. The album appears to be about heartbreak, bitterly so, but without much anger. It seethes, but it doesn't have the sheer force of past albums. The difference with past material shows in the live performance. Homme sits and plays the piano several times, which is not something I had ever seen him do before, and there's a commitment to vocal delivery that I've heard before, but definitely not lasting through a whole show. Van Leeuwen, Fertita, and Shuman are unerring as always, and Van Leeuwen is as entertaining a guitarist as he ever was - not to detract from Homme, who can still riff. There were, however,  none of the extended, grandiose double guitar solos characteristic of live Queens shows - it seemed like they were under threat of curfew and wanted to get through the album and as much of an encore as they could manage. Given how long it's been since I've seen them, and how often I've seen them stand on stage and riff for minutes, I didn't mind getting an extra song in exchange this time. Song for the Dead is possibly one of the bleakest-sounding tracks they've ever put down, and it only sounded slightly less so that night for lacking Lanegan on vocals. It's one I've heard them do many times before, and it stirred memories, more of them good than I had expected. Queens has always been a very personal band for me, whatever the fuck that means. I don't just mean none of my other friends like them, which is mostly true. They just have these associations in my mind, with memories. With a past I don't often think about, even if it wasn't really that long ago. The new album is very much about memories, and the things that steal them, but instead, it seems to have returned some to me that had been lost. And I'm grateful for that, and for the realization that in a world of constant disappointment, with ourselves and those who claim to love us, Queens of the Stone Age still doesn't suck.

/sincerity

Secret Mountains - Rainer [2013]

Rainer is out today, and was available streaming via Stereogum starting last night. The record is short on tracks (only seven of them) but long on riffs - these are long, introspective songs, and the entire record clocks in around 45 minutes, which seems pretty common these days and is definitely pretty hefty for so few tracks. This is their debut LP, and while they have lots of good songs that they've chosen not to record again for it, I don't blame them for playing their hand close to the vest. Better to have fewer strong songs than end up with some filler, and they've managed to create a nice little slice of music in which the parts all make sense together. As much as I want more songs as a fan, I endorse the decision to keep it short.

This isn't a first impression, more like a fifth, but it helps that I have some experience with these tracks already. Only three seem really new, and I feel like I've heard parts of the title track somewhere before, perhaps under a different name, which, after the recent single, would leave only one truly new song on the whole record. However, almost everything about these old songs is new again. Weepy Little Fingers, Make Love Stay, and Golden Blue all retain the same basic shape as their predecessors, but the colors and textures, the pacing and drama - they're all different. There are new riffs, new noises, new shifts in cadence and feeling fleshing these tracks out more completely. They never seemed particularly thin before, but it's now fairly clear that they were basically live takes - and it's really great to see what they were able to do with them in a proper studio. But that's the least of the changes. First, check out the old version of High Horse from their Shaking Through Session:

and then check out the new official video for it below. Worlds apart. The video is nice too. Obvious themes of life and death are obvious.


Secret Mountains - "High Horse" Official Video from Brian Papish on Vimeo.

The way this track has changed with studio production is profound. The amount of restraint they show taking it down a notch, making it as eerie and haunting as it became, is impressive. I had no idea they were capable of sounding like this, and I'm very curious to find out if this was their vision, or their producer's, because I want to know who to thank. On the topic of production, it pays to point out that as far as I'm concerned, all the right decisions have been made. Kelly Laughlin's vocals are buried when they should be buried, and clear when they should be clear. The way the album flows from track to track is better than I could have even hoped for. The ambient sounds and field recordings are lush and just loud enough to be noticed, as they should be. The drums are neat and clean have not lost their characteristic driving (and dramatic) momentum. This album sounds great on speakers with a good low end, but it sounds even better on really nice headphones, so you can hear all the little noises in the background - and there are a lot of them. I had my jaw drop a time or two trying to get my mind to keep up with what I was hearing. It's been a long time since a band have done that for me, and it makes me think they have the potential to become truly great.

After seeing them live once (out of two attempts), hearing the early tracks, and now hearing the record, it's pretty obvious that they're one of those bands who play a song one way live, and another way in the studio, which is GREAT, in my opinion. Gives you a reason to go to the shows, and I'll be going on Saturday (March 2nd) for the record release party at Cameo Gallery in Brooklyn. Those of you in their hometown of Baltimore can catch them at The Bell Foundry on Thursday February 28th.

P.S. - She sounds like another vocalist I like, but I can't place it. If you can think of the answer, please put it in the comments. It's driving me nuts. 

Secret Mountains - Coasting (single)

I'm so impatient for the Secret Mountains debut record (called "Rainer"), I'm going to warm up a little with their first single from it, "Coasting". Edit: it's out, and you can listen here on bandcamp.



First though, a little background. Secret Mountains are a six-piece from Baltimore playing blissed-out psych-rock with a distinct self-indulgent bent, which is a big draw for me. I'm a sucker for "big" music, and their songs seem to tower over me as I listen, getting larger and taller as the layers pile on. Kelly Laughlin's vocals are haunting and forlorn, and just a little bit hesitant sometimes - as if she's not sure she wants to confess such significant thoughts and feelings, but is compelled to anyway. I can't understand what she's singing most of the time, but I can just barely make out words here and there, which really adds to the excitement-of-discovery feeling I get with this band that I haven't had in a long time. Each song feels new for longer than it should - though it's worth mentioning that it also takes awhile to be able to tell their songs apart from one another. That's not necessarily a bad thing, to have such similarity in style between tracks, at least not in this case, for me, because I really eat this shit up. The songs tend to be geometric and climactic, rising and falling with satisfying predictability as layers of noodling guitars stack up with layers of more ambient color coming from the keyboards and extra guitar. The vocals are generally a little buried, melting back into the big picture being painted as you listen, which had an entrancing effect on me. Before now, they've only released a few singles and EPs, mostly sold out, but all well worth tracking down. You can get their Winter Sessions tape on Bandcamp, and their Kaddish EP is on Spotify. You can also hear their Rejoice tape on Bandcamp, and their recent single High Horse is on Bandcamp and Spotify. edit: and there's a new version of the song along with an official video on vimeo.

The new single cuts in a little startlingly - these bongos are clearly leading out from another song on the record. Before actually getting to the song itself, can I just say how excited I am by this? I know production techniques like this are hardly new, but I was really hoping this album would flow like that, because that sort of production decision seemed like it would suit their play style. So i'm delighted to see it's likely going to be the case. The guitar riff kicks in with an immediate ambient accompaniment, creating a dark, foreboding mood that only gets intensified as Ms. Laughlin starts cooing over the top. The ambient backing swirls and rises and drags us into the actual song as the drums kick in and the floaty guitar is replaced by a lower one, at which point the mood becomes a little less muddy and dark, a little more distantly hopeful. That's probably one of my favorite things about this band throughout their earlier releases - how good they are at nailing that feeling of hope or triumph over adversity. This is a band that also does big climaxes well - but this song does not have one. They get a good thing going, and build some really nice tension and mood. Towards the end a building wall of guitars starts to appear, and Kelly comes back for one more line - and then cuts you off abruptly. Normally, this is the kind of thing that would drive me up a wall a little bit (though this is not nearly as bad an example as some others), and I've not really heard this from them before. But I expect it will work really well in the context of the record, as long as it's been produced with an ear to its flow, which seems pretty likely because of how the intro is cut. As a single, I'm not sure of the choice, but it might have simply been the shortest track on the record; their songs tend to run quite long (which is not a complaint, quite the opposite in fact). I really like the song, but it leaves me wanting more desperately - which I suppose might be a reasonable goal to have accomplished with a lead single.

Rainer comes out February 6th, is out now and you can listen to it or buy it here on bandcamp. It is limited to 500 vinyl copies (or digital download) and can also be purchased over here at Friends Records. Stay tuned for a review of the album when I finally receive it, and more after their record release party @ Cameo Gallery in Brooklyn on March 2nd.