Quick N' Dirty Reviews

Queens Of The Stone Age/ Era Vulgaris
Judging by Queens Of The Stone Age’s fifth studio album, Era Vulgaris, rock is back – back in a gigantic grab you by the throat and whip you around like a fucking rag doll way. Like their last release, Lullabies To Paralyze, Era Vulgaris is very dark but yet somehow feels different at the same time. Whereas most of the tracks on Lullabies To Paralyze were similar to a fault, Era Vulgaris has a distinguishable personality that resonates throughout its entire run. As mentioned, this album reinstates rock to our lexicon, so for anyone thinking that Nickelback and Daughtry were the best the genre had to offer in 2007… please go locate your testicles. Era Vulgaris is extremely riff heavy – in fact, this record includes some of the best guitarwork in the band's ten year history. Look no further than "3’s & 7’s” which, with its carefree, Skynyrd-recalling riff serves as a perfect microcosm of where the band stands in 2007. As a side note, the Queens released it as the first single in the UK, but opted to give “Sick, Sick, Sick” the nod as the US’s first single. While “Sick, Sick, Sick” is a great, heavy song that includes the seeming incongruity of The Strokes’ Julian Casablancas on backing vocals, “3’s & 7’s” would have been a much stronger choice but that’s a small dispute when considering the entirety of the record. Head Queen Josh Homme has perfectly nailed former member/mentor Mark Lanegan’s vocal style on three tracks which are unsurprisingly some of the best on the album. On the very loose and bluesy “Make It Wit Chu,” the mid-tempo “Into The Hollow,” and the subdued “Suture Up Your Future” Homme evokes a much more relaxed Lanegan, one whose voice hasn’t been wrecked by years of smack use. The actual Mark Lanegan does return, however, on “River In The Road,” a much darker and disorienting (in a good way) track than the other three. Change in voice seems to be a theme on Era Vulgaris as even when Homme isn’t embodying Lanegan, his vocals sound different than on past records. “Turnin’ On The Screw” and “I’m Designer” sound like another person entirely, but Homme’s guitar is the one constant. Shredding through all of the aforementioned tracks, no song on this album demonstrates the power of this band more than “Misfit Love.” A lonely drum intro leads into a rhythm guitar that sounds like a chainsaw, joined by a fluttering guitar effect that morphs into another heavy Queens riff – this is the type of track that you introduce uninitiated friends to the band with. Standing behind only Songs For The Deaf in the Queens’ catalog, Era Vulgaris is some of the heaviest, dirtiest rock to be released this year – not that we’d want it any other way.

Dirty Rating: 88/100

Queens Of The Stone Age On MySpace Music
Queens Of The Stone Age's Official Site


Air/ Pocket Symphony
As you sit and listen to a record, you don’t often contemplate a band’s name but if you think about it, their moniker really does speak to their sound and influences your impressions of their work. Some bands' names fit perfectly with their aesthetic – Led Zeppelin; The Clash; Alice In Chains; Screaming Trees; The Smashing Pumpkins. Those names alone are an indication of what’s about to burst forth from your speakers or through your headphones. Unfortunately for Air, they stay a bit too true to their name with their fifth release, Pocket Symphony. Continuing their maddening trend of alternating stellar records with entirely forgettable ones, Pocket Symphony is the very bland sound of Air phoning it in. One could argue that they’re going for a minimalist sound but, to their detriment, it comes off more as lazy than anything else and Air is far too talented a band to rest on their laurels like this. On their past albums, even their mellower tracks had a personality that is sorely lacking here. There really is nothing happening on this record – everything fades into the ether, never to be heard from again. “Space Maker,” “Left Bank,” and “Once Upon A Time” (a puzzling choice for a first single) are all so minimal that it’s impossible to give any kind of accurate description about them. “Napalm Love” and “Mer Du Japon” venture closest to Air’s past triumphs but they would both be dismissed as lesser tracks on their previous albums. Herein lies the problem. As the strongest tracks on Pocket Symphony, they’re just not powerful enough to support the inferior ones that surround them. Perhaps no track literally sums up Pocket Symphony better than “Lost Message” – somehow in the three years since Talkie Walkie, Air has lost its way, devolving from an inventively sublime electronic act to one who now sounds best suited to scoring local updates on The Weather Channel.

Dirty Rating: 41/100

Air On MySpace Music
Air's Official Site