The first thing that hits you as I Am Your Queen struts and swaggers its way towards you is just how out of keeping the track is with any current musical fad or fashion. And I say that as a good thing. A very good thing. But then again, I guess if it had landed in any other musical decade it would have sounded similarly alien and otherworldly. And that is just one of the tracks many strengths, its originality.
It’s built around an intriguing bass groove, one that acts as a bedrock for everything else to hang on, the understated beats, the slinky guitar lines which coil around it, even the vocals that seem to be dueting with its mysterious groove and grace, all seem tethered to it. And having this solid, pulsating and purposeful line to ground the song, means that the other elements are allowed to just float in its vicinity creating a fantastic sense of space.
When you go looking for comparisons and reference points, it is to the 60’s that you find the most similarities, or more properly if the goth scene of the ’80s hadn’t been spawned by a bunch of ex-punks hooked on Victorian horror literature but had grown out of strange garage blues experiments in Detroit in 1964. It has a slightly psychedelic vibe about it, a melancholic air surrounds it and it harnesses some dark but dreamlike qualities too. But mostly it is just odd. And wonderfully so.
And when you get down to the lyrics which seem to just saunter along the top of the song, the oddness continues. If the title didn’t warn you of the sensual and fetish-like nature of the song, the lyrics will leave you in no doubt. But again, like the music which drives the narration, it is all done tastefully making the story playful rather than sordid, kinky rather than dirty. And what is life without a bit of kink?
I love songs that confuse me. Songs that don’t fit in anywhere, at least nowhere obvious. Music which beguiles, which is unlike much that you have heard before. I Am Your Queen does all of that and more besides. How great is that?
