Era Vulgaris (Queens of the Stone Age, 2007)

In English, "vulgar" is a loaded word, more often than not a pejorative derived from the perfectly innocent Latin "vulgaris", meaning simply "common". Throughout history, a dominant theme is that we live is very plain times (the "era vulgaris"), one that pales in the wake of golden ages, silver ages, and the hallowed heroic ages of centuries past. In American history, the 18th and 19th centuries positively glow in comparison to the 20th, the American era vulgaris. This failure to live up to the greatness of our ancestors invariably leads to the derogatory "vulgar" that stands out in the title of the Queens of the Stone Age album from 2007.

If you've been down Sunset Boulevard, you know what a tangled mess of stuff it is, all just blocks away from multi-million dollar homes on the hilly side and run-down decades-old apartments and motels on the other. Gas stations, strip clubs, fast-food joints, movie theaters, mini-malls, full-sized malls, churches, schools, funeral homes. It's enough to make you queasy (or "Sick Sick Sick" if you will) taking it all in. This is the inspiration behind Era Vulgaris, the spiritual successor to the band's acclaimed Songs for the Deaf, whose theme was a car, a radio, and a desert. This is the other side of Southern California and it's pretty bleak in its own way.

The QOTSA lineup has traditionally been fairly fluid, though most of the band from Lullabyes to Paralyze are here for this one. I saw them perform back on the Henry Rollins Show and other than the clean-cut Josh Homme they seemed a little more goth than the usual lineup. The sound however is unmistakable, a lo-fi crunch with a churning rhythm that reaches near-Hawkwind proportions, although Dave Grohl is not present here. He would return for the next album, plus work with Homme in Them Crooked Vultures.

My interest in QOTSA had waned considerably by this time, so I didn't rush out to buy it like the previous two albums. I still haven't heard Like Clockwork, the album that followed this one about six years later.