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Rating: Mark Ronson. This name alone was enough to make numerous fans of Queens Of The Stone Age sit up on their seats.
An undoubtedly quality producer, but so far has predominantly dabbled in works with a strong pop imprint (Sean Paul, Amy Winehouse, Bruno Mars); and the statements by the leader Josh Homme ("I was inspired by Uptown Funk for the writing of the songs") have added fuel to the fire.
Any doubts were dispelled upon listening to this new "Villains", the seventh studio effort by the now "classic" American band: recorded in three months in Los Angeles and preceded by the frenetic single "The Way You Used To Do" (a frantic update in a Ronsonian key of certain 60's blues classics, featuring claphands and sharp riffs marked by dry and synthetic drums), "Villains" is intelligently brief (nine tracks for three quarters of an hour, a low standard for Homme), sonically very compact and is perhaps the band's most focused album (probably also the most convincing) since the now indispensable "Songs For The Deaf".
An album that begins grandly with the seismic "Feet Don’t Fail Me Now" (it would be a crime not to release it as a single), intertwining piercing funk riffs and stop-and-go's at precisely the right moments. After the aforementioned single comes "Domesticated Animals", another great piece that rekindles Homme's taste for circular structures and lowers the pace, introducing a quieter, perhaps coincidentally Ronsonian section of the album (specifically, the taste for the classic psychedelia of "Fortress").
The pace picks up again with the overwhelming "Head Like A Haunted House", a sort of stoner reinterpretation of certain old rockabilly flares, then transitions to the somewhat lackluster glam of "Un-Reborn Again", possibly the least convincing track of the album.
"Hideaway" revisits certain atmospheric tracks found in the highly underrated "Lullabies To Paralyze" (just think of "I Never Came"), while the following "The Evil Has Landed" is by far the best track of the album: it presents itself as a mini-suite/journey through various styles, from hard rock to pop to psychedelia, concluding with a guitar blow worthy of the band's early works. The album closes with the already performed live "Villains Of Circumnstance", with its mix of romance and melody engulfed in the band's classic style.
A great album, this Villains, which definitively consecrates a band that has rightfully entered the gotha of global alt rock.
Best track: The Evil Has Landed
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By algol
The ones that come after a huge screwing: unpleasant sense of violation, disgust, grave disappointment leading to anger.
Villains is a pop album, even well-packaged... the pathetic attempts at self-convincing by an old fool who doesn't want to resign himself to the idea that one of his favorite bands has produced yet another well-packaged crap.
