Queen's Pleasure - Shy Bairns Get Nowt (2023)

Frontman Jurre Otto found the phrase 'Shy Bairns Get Nowt' while wandering through the city, chalked on a wall, in the middle of the writing process of the second album of Queen's Pleasure. It resonated immediately. It also seems to be the case these days: if you don't shout, you won't be heard. In a world where polarization and algorithms determine the order of the day, there is rarely room for nuance. Fortunately, shouting along is no problem, the Amsterdam foursome has plenty to say. The members, now in their twenties, have been playing together since their teenage years. On the second album they passionately play and sing away everything that bothers them. Britrock is becoming increasingly infused with post-punk. The whole thing has a punk energy, carried by the bass Jelmer van Os and the drums of Sal Rubinstein.

Recorded in the seclusion of Vlieland in the winter, the band entered the abandoned pop venue De Bolder. Here they worked with undiminished energy on the “difficult second” under the watchful eye of producer Frans Hagenaar. But there was no real difficulty in this case: The twelve songs on the album are bursting with ideas, from the creatively found drum and bass rhythms and the cutting riffs of guitarist Teun Putker to the chunks of text that Otto seems to bite into the microphone. spit. Yet excess is nowhere to be seen, production-wise there is a strong focus on the core, the instrumentation that is all captured on tape in one go. With a minimum of overdubs and embellishments you always hear a band in their purest possible form. It is therefore easy to predict what you can expect at a Queen's Pleasure concert: A live show that oozes urgency. and where you could watch an entire show individually with each band member.

The urge to get to the core is also strong lyrically. Everywhere Otto looks he sees superficial facades and with his sharp tongue he pierces right through them. The annoyingly tough talk to impress (Living A Lie), the commercially exploited sexuality that you see in every advertisement (Playboy's On), the misplaced pride that the Netherlands still seems to have in the VOC era (My Eyes Adored You Too ). Otto himself is not immune to these idealized delusions. In Man In A Suit, that idealized version of yourself even takes physical form. That man in the expensive suit against whom you always have to measure yourself. On Monday, Otto describes how the end times are coming (on a Monday, of course) but it's hard to really care about that. Why would you if nothing ever changes? Queen's Pleasure wanders musically through the city, that wonderful but unforgivable place where everything seems to happen. Every walk is filled with memories of all the difficult events that have happened here before, but which you still cannot stay away from. It is not an easy existence, but no matter what happens, Queen's Pleasure continues to search tirelessly for what is real.