In a recent interview with 1LIVE Plan B, Joshua Homme, lead singer of Queens of The Stone Age, expressed his desire to make music that “get(s) you to look left… to believe that a song is going this way… just so it can come from behind and hit you from over here”. This mission statement of sorts is hardly news for a band that, for 20 years now, have consistently proven themselves to be innovative, re-inventive ambassadors of the hard rock genre, relentlessly building on their stoner-rock foundations and discovering new layers to play with and explore in their maturity. It is, however, on Villains, their seventh record, that the band fully indulges this curveball approach, resulting in some of their most eclectic, ambitious, and bewildering music to date.
Much has been made of their collaboration with Mark Ronson on this record, the producer of numerous top 40 singles such as ‘Uptown Funk’ and ‘Locked Out of Heaven’. Fans far and wide have dreaded the new dance-flavoured, groove-orientated direction that they believed Ronson’s input may bring to this iconic rock band. True fans, however, will surely recognise that undercurrents of this kind of sound and attitude have been present since their inception, with Homme always showing an interest in the more off-kilter, groovier side of rock and roll (see Era Vulgaris). Villains is where this attitude is finally brought to the fore: it is where the tongue finally pops out from the cheek. But those expecting (or fearing) a catchy, funky, simplistic pop-rock record, in alignment with the very groovy lead single from the album, will certainly be surprised by this collection of songs that are for the most part specifically engineered to blindside you, leap up on to your back, and steer you into terrain both unexpected and unfamiliar – much like the villainous figure on the album’s cover. Indeed, most of the songs on this record exceed the 4-minute mark and function as extended, looping, transformative jams that alternate between struggling to find a singular sound to hold on to or achieving the kind of symphonic, head-banging bliss that comes with their most celebrated work. In many ways, Villains plays out like …Like Clockwork’s excitable, slick, out-of-towner younger brother, one who’s very existence seems to revolve around disrupting the status quo that Joshua Homme has been so keen to “blow his load” over in the past.
‘Feet Don’t Fail Me Now’ is a leading example of this, with the drooping, ominous, synth-infused intro leading you in a similar moody direction to …Like Clockwork’s opener, before dropping into a bouncy guitar riff and flurries of drums. It’s a hell of a groove, but perhaps not as unfamiliar to many QOTSA fans as you may think – it evokes the flamboyancy that has always underwritten even their darkest works. Although these introductory synths initially act as a mere bridge into this kind of sound, hearing them reprise towards the end of this intro serves as a reminder of the band’s wonderful ability to balance two opposing sides of their personality within the space of a single song. The following two songs coast off the echo of this groove, with ‘The Way You Used To Do’ wearing it as its blood, skin, and structure. The first of the singles from Villains really gets the boots tapping, with a snappy, slick riff that just doesn’t give in. It is the snarling, overexcited puppy to …Like Clockwork’s howling wolf of a lead single (‘My God Is The Sun’), and is relentlessly exciting and danceable. Of all the cuts on this album it is perhaps this and ‘Head Like A Haunted House’ where Mark Ronson’s presence is felt the most deeply. Interestingly, it is these that function as the most directly impactful songs on the album, matched only by the backhanded, twisting rhythm of ‘Domesticated Animals’ .
Whereas the first three songs feel linked by a desire to incite dancing, ass-shaking, and all-round movement, ‘Fortress’ throws a curveball to this formula – but it is one that does not quite hit the mark. The rather static production, attuned to singling out the most forceful sound and inflating it to its most distorted and aggressive proportions in the first three songs, finds itself adrift in a rather limp song that has no clear destination, despite the assertive, advisory tone of the lyrics (“If ever your fortress falls, you’re always safe in mine”). The greater emphasis on Homme’s vocal delivery here dulls the effectiveness of the melody around him, rendering it washed out and weak in comparison to the electrified charge of the preceding songs. It works as part of this curveball formula, but it quickly becomes lost in the eclectic nature of the songs following it.
Two songs, ‘Un-Reborn Again’ and ‘Hideaway’, function as two of the more forgettable cuts on the record, with riffs and drum fills that would perhaps work better with a more lo-fi, heavy production, and near-indistinguishable hooks that collapse into the fabric of the songs they are meant to be bursting out of. ‘Un-Reborn Again’ almost rescues itself with an utterly bewildering but somehow fantastic bridge towards its end, backed up by a series of angelic harmonies from Homme and co, but this fails to go anywhere and quickly sinks back into the loping, fuzzy, indistinct riff that bogs down the song. ‘Hideaway’ suffers from the same issues, but has a lot of fun with an 80’s-kissed synthesiser that sneaks and echoes behind the stagnant guitars and percussion. While some of the songs on Villains could benefit from being cut a minute or so shorter, ‘Hideaway’ builds towards a compelling crescendo of soaring falsetto’s before frustratingly coming to an end – and herein lies the main flaw of the middle section of this record. It is either too much or too little in terms of length and direction, with songs like ‘Fortress’ and ‘Un-Reborn Again’ attempting to meticulously build upon singular riffs or hooks without any real intent, or songs like Hideaway which fizzle out at the peak of what should have been considered as their musical climax.
‘The Evil Has Landed’ and ‘Villains of Circumstance’ steer this rollercoaster of an album right back onto its tracks, however, with the former reasserting Homme’s gift for balancing the hard-rock sensibilities of the band’s early years with the tongue-in-cheek, melodramatic approach to rock and roll that has coloured some of their later releases. It is a truly miraculous track where each and every instrument appears to be playing off one another in a taut, muscular harmony, instead of wrestling to take the spotlight as is the case on the first three songs on the record, which in turn invites comparisons to some of the band’s most celebrated cuts on Songs For The Deaf. The drumming of the excellent Jon Theodore, previously squandered by the more experimental, groove-heavy production that this album thrusts forward, finally takes on a life of its own, branding this second single with a forceful, thundering direction, fully earning the explosion of noise and its subsequent aftermath in the wistful and beautiful ‘Villains of Circumstance’.
If Villains is to be criticised for anything, it should not be for the lack of feedback-heavy, thunderous guitar-and-drum melodies that popularised the band in the early 2000s. The attitude that shaped these sounds still runs through this record like a shot of heroin through an open vein. Instead, it can be viewed as an album that stumbles a little under the weight of its ambition and extensive array of influences and experimentations, mostly failing to construct a driving sound with singular purpose in the way that its big brother, …Like Clockwork, achieved so flawlessly. This is, however, a small price to pay for the sound of a band that is still operating at peak form 21 years after their inception. Villains is a jumbled, cacophonous, jam-heavy work of near-excellence that deftly combines their newly-focused rock and roll inhibitions with the atmospheric, experimental approach to the darker side of rock that they pushed forward with their previous album. When choosing to close the album with the words “always, evermore, and on and on,” therefore, Joshua Homme has proven to us that we can probably take them as gospel, and that we can expect a lot more from one of the world’s most influential, innovative rock bands – with more surprises along the way.
Words by Jake Shelvey