Stone age Complications... or is it Complication?
I am not really sure what this album is called as its name is printed differently on two parts of the album. But the name of the album is of little importance, it’s really the music that matters, and sadly there’s just not too much of it. I know this is an EP and that five or six songs will suffice but The Queens have a pretty rich history, and a body of work to back it up.
Now the music…
The songs on this EP are good; the covers are nice fuzzy more “modern” sounding versions of the original, the songs are injected with a new energy and a sexy swagger that The Queens are the masters of. The best of the covers is, The Cramps “Most Exalted Potentate of Love”. This song sounds great with the fuzzy/sexy Queens treatment. The worst of the covers being The Kinks “Who will be the next in line”. Queens of the Stone Age have covered better songs, hell they have covered better Kinks songs. This could have been replaced with the far superior cover of “Everybody’s Gonna Be Happy.” Wake up screaming” is also very well done, they make it there own without completely abandoning the feel of the original.
After popping the disk into my CD player, I looked at the track list, and saw “No one Knows” then I looked at the rest of it, and it said “(Unkle Reconstruction)”. I thought to myself, “What a remix? I am intrigued.” At least it doesn’t suck; I was actually pleasantly surprised by the remix. It has a cool trip hop sound to it, and keeps the paranoid feeling of the original, while completely changing the sound of the song. And if you listen closely at the end, you can hear the bass-line from the original version. It is a solid remix. But it’s nothing mind-blowing, and could have been replaced with another classic Queens B-side.
“Hey!” B-sides cool. I love B-sides. The B-sides “chunk” of the EP is pretty good; there is a completely revamped version of the very early Queens song “Born to Hula.” To me it’s not better then the original, by any stretch buts it’s a cool take on a classic. But born to hula is just a warm up for the EP closer, “The Bronze”, this is arguably one of the best songs they have ever recorded. It still boggles my mind why this never made it onto and album, I think this would have sounded great on Rated: R, it has a sound that is kind of different then anything they have ever done, the guitar work is exceptionally well done. The two actual B-sides alone on the album are worth the five or six bucks the disk will run you.
This is a pretty good EP and worth the few bucks it cost. Now it definitely would have been cool if they would have released a complete B-sides and rarities collection, but I guess ill take what I can get. I give this album 3.5 out of 5 because its good, but it could have been much better.
