Opening track Regular John, and following track Avon are such a great introductions to Queens. Seeing as Josh never sang for Kyuss, that job going to the brilliant John Garcia, you hear Josh finding his voice and battling through nerves it seems. Regular John is still a favourite of mine and sounds great live too.
Fuzzy guitar sounds will always grab my attention, especially when they're produced exactly as they're played. One of my many gripes about music, and films to a degree, these days is the overproduction of it all. I hear far too many songs where everything sounds all "nice, clean and polished, which won't hurt anyone!!!". Except my ears. Seriously, hearing bands these days is pretty annoying in that more often than not you can guess what's going to happen next, because all the hard work of finding the noise/riff/melody that's beautifully tucked away somewhere is presented to you. Sort of like say, playing a video game from the start with cheat codes activated and finishing the game with no effort rather than getting good at the game and playing it from scratch. Fortunately, there are distorted guitar noises all over this record, and what I tend to find is that re-releases tend to make everything louder, which is no different here.
The re-release also contains 3 tracks not on the original, including one of my good friend Clewzy's favourite's called The Bronze. The other two are These Aren't The Droids You're Looking For and Spiders And Vinearoons. And the best thing about the new additions is that they don't make what was already a great album worse, but enhance it. Containing great songs like How To Handle a Rope, You Can't Quit Me Baby and forgotten classic Give The Mule What He Wants, the three additions are certainly not out of place.
This record also has amongst it my favourite Queens Of The Stone Age song, Mexicola. I just love the angry and almost hungover sound of the bass, which when combined with Josh Homme's guitar sounds like a sledgehammer smashing into a wall. The guitar itself just sounds like dripping electricity oozing from everywhere around you. Again on this song you hear Josh finding his voice and almost quite unsure of how to sing this song. I really struggle to sing the praises of songs and why I like them so much. With this one I probably guess it's cos whenever I've seen Queens live it's been the song I've had the most fun hearing (although A Song For The Dead with Kyle Ray at Hyde Park will live with me forever)
All in all, this is still my favourite QOTSA album and will still probably go down as a criminally underrated album. If I'm in a pub/bar with a juke box, I'll always have a look to see if anything from this record is on it, and will more than likely play it. Which for me shows just how good it really is
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