0.22.0 - Does Anyone Ever Get This Right?
So, I know I have a weekly wrapup from last week to write, but I've not been able to summon the spoons to face it. I'm not sure how much I have to say about any of the albums I listened to really, so I'll find a way to scoop them up just for the same of covering every single album this year in text, but there's no in depth essay coming, just a collection of music I listened to in the background while other stuff happened around me.
This week has been the longest period where I've not written anything for this blog, nor listened to any new albums (or in fact, any albums at all). I had a fun time with my friends at UK Games Expo over the weekend but came back slightly drained; its a long few days and it's a big wear on my introverted social battery to hang out with people that I like for four days straight. Coming back into work this week has been a challenge as well - its pretty tough sledding at the moment, and high stress situations combined with bone deep exhaustion has left me feeling like a zombie for the last few days - so much so that I've reverted to bad habits, sitting endlessly watching the same Youtube comfort videos instead of listening to new music, and just cycling through the same roguelike card games on my computer while running my brain on battery-saver mode instead of writing. While I am having a moan, long time readers might remember the saga of my cracked wisdom tooth back in January, where I opted not to have it removed and just capped and cleaned. Well, the bill might have come due on that decision, as I have recurring tooth pain in the same area now, and last night I think I trapped a nerve or something in my shoulder playing tennis, which has left my back and shoulder stiff and sore. In short, I am falling apart.
A perfect time to cover ...Like Clockwork.
I saw Queens of the Stone Age play for the first time in the summer of 2000 at the Leeds/Reading Festival, a summer festival traditionally showcasing rock and metal music in the UK. The band were still two years away from their breakthrough album, Songs For The Deaf, but Rated R had just been released, and I had heard Feel Good Hit Of The Summer on some compilation CD given away free at record stores as a kind of sampler platter of new music (for an example, see a write up here of one I covered from my CD rack back in 2017), and The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret* was getting played at the rock nightclubs we were frequenting. In the crowd for that show, my friend at the time Laura sat on my shoulders to see the performance (I generally don't approve of shoulder-sitters in crowds but she was very short and couldn't see anything) just in time for her to witness bassist Nick Oliveri stripping naked on stage to play their final song.
By the time Songs For The Deaf landed, led by No-one Knows and Go With The Flow (with iconic music videos for both songs), I was a Queens of the Stone Age fan. As a band which has gone through multiple lineup changes, anchored only by frontman Josh Homme, I have differing feelings about the QOTSA discography, but I own them all, up to and including 2023's In Times New Roman, and while there's something interesting or significant on each of those albums, the critical consensus is that Songs For The Deaf is their magnum opus. In this case, critical consensus is wrong. ...Like Clockwork is their best album.
If the distance between Songs For The Deaf and ...Like Clockwork was 2 years instead of 11, they followed on from each other instead of having two other albums between them, it would be easier to see how ...Like Clockwork takes the musical and emotional themes of Songs For The Deaf and expands them in every direction, taking the breakneck doomed momentum of Songs and showing what the consequences of that journey are, how enthusiastic nihilism transforms into exhaustion and regret. Josh Homme, hospitalised for months with an infection that he thought might cost him his life had a lot of time to reflect in song on how you feel staring back at the road you've taken and the choices you've made. I Sat By The Ocean laments failed relationships; Fairweather Friends lost friendships and acquaintances; I Appear Missing confronts mortality and what we leave behind when we die, The Vampyre Of Time And Memory looks at the choices we've made, and where that has taken us.
If my thesis about the power of music being its ability to tell you that the things you are feeling are shared by at least one other person in the world is true, that your emotional landscape and perception of the world isn't unique to you, that someone at least has felt like you feel, that explains why ...Like Clockwork is a record I find myself returning to again and again. If Asleep In The Back was the soundtrack to my depression, ...Like Clockwork is the soundtrack to my midlife crisis**. So much of the lyrical content asks questions I ask myself as I slowly careen towards 50, wondering how I got here and whether its going to suddenly all go away. I made a will because I keep hearing about people younger than me dying unexpectedly. I wonder about the future, and what society will look like in ten years. When these thoughts sweep over my consciousness like a tidal wave of insecurity, I listen to ...Like Clockwork and I feel understood.
There are no solutions here, just solidarity. This isn't an album that's going to tell you everything is going to be OK - quite the contrary, it's going to tell you in no uncertain terms that sometimes your actions can be meaningless and devoid of consequence or outcome, that your good deeds might not be returned to you in kind, that regret and mortality and insecurity are part of life, and there is no magic potion to erase those feelings. But if you feel that way, have those doubts, here's proof that others have felt the same thing, confronted the same fears, and pushed on regardless, dragging their choices and fears and insecurities behind them into the unknown. There's power in that knowledge, a rock you can cling to while the tides of anxiety sweep away, and you can move forward again.
So I did it, I got back on the horse and published a thing and now I'm going to try and listen to some more music and gear up to write up and clear off a bunch of albums over the weekend and try and get back on track. The distance between the time elapsed and my 1,000 record target shrinks every day I can't focus, can't bring myself to put something new on and think about how it makes me feel.
One thing that is clear, it's all downhill from here.
*This is another of my favourite Karaoke songs to perform, but its hard to find.
** You would think it would be, you know, 'Midlife Crisis', but that song was written by Mike Patton when he was in his early 20s and its not really about a midlife crisis anyway.
