The Cosmos Rocks

As a longtime Queen fan (of the WHOLE band, not just Freddie) and an admirer of the talents of Paul Rodgers in whatever form, I was so anxious to hear this album that I bought it as an import. I liked it quite a bit. This album is three flavors I like mixing it up very well and doing what they do. A nice variety of songs, and if anything, I wish there had been even more. I like that it was a pretty raw, straight forward record without a lot of gloss on it. Its very genuine in that way and I respond to that. And, in the Queen tradition, I like that its not taking itself *too* seriously, that they gave themselves the freedom to just have fun, make fun music, and just sort of be lads playing music together. On the flip side, I like that there's a lot of genuine, unadorned emotion - some hope, some sadness, some loss, some ambition. It's a rounded record, if you know what I mean. And it has a very organic, "all came out of the same pot" kind of feeling to it, which contrasts rather sharply, to my ears at least, with most of the Queen-proper studio albums starting with "The Game", all of which sound to me like 3 or 4 great singles surrounded by some very pleasant but mostly inconsequential filler, written by 4 seperate songwriters working more or less alone. Conversely, I do wish this album had had a couple of poppier tracks. Queen became as much a pop band as a rock band in the '80s and '90s, and my ears have become somewhat attuned to that. I absolutely think that this trio is, in every way, a new band. Being the vocalist, Paul's influence is very strong, but having heard a lot of Paul's solo work from the last 15 years, Brian and Roger's influence on Paul is crystal clear. It's a much more defined and shaped album than Paul's solo stuff, a much broader variety of sounds, and of course the elements of the classic Queen sound are easily and frequently identifiable. And I think Paul allowed Brian and Roger to be unburdened from the shackle of having to have a specific "Queen sound" that refers to something that stopped developing organically 17 years ago. After listening to "The Cosmos Rocks", I hope they make another album together as Queen + Paul Rodgers. They've made themselves a very interesting beginning, and I would really like to hear how they develop as a writing unit and as a band. The Queen is dead; long live the Queen.