This is another album that I used to own on vinyl, but only some of it is familiar to me (beyond the Greatest Hits tracks). I put this down, again, to having a pretty crappy record player fed with second-hand records so that the general listening experience was not especially enjoyable.
Knowing where Queen go with their sound, this is clearly a bridge between the rockier Queen II and the more melodic Jazz and Night At The Opera. Some of the fantasy elements remain, on the short Mercury track Lily Of The Valley that mentions “the King of Rhye”, some of the heavier elements remain in Brian May’s great echo-tracked chugging guitar work on Brighton Rock.
But there are also moves towards the mix of vaudeville and rock on Killer Queen, or trad jazz/rock on Bring Back That Leroy Brown, not to mention the anthemic album closer In The Lap Of The Gods, moving towards Queen’s characteristic showmanship, creating a larger-than-life sound that fills stadiums.
At this stage in their career they are playing support for Mott The Hoople (as noted in the lyrics to Now I’m Here, “down in the city, just The Hoople and me”). Soon, they will join the pantheon of stadium rockers, Freddie Mercury’s voice getting bigger and bigger with each album.
There are a lot of little short tracks, some of which blend together in a kind of medley. Not all of them are keepers, to be honest; some are fairly forgettable as Queen songs go, but each one feels like the band developing their musical muscles. The production is still suitably big, but not as over-done as on Queen II. And I’m left with the sense that I started with, that this is an important stepping stone on the journey, but not the destination.
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