Queen - Queen II

A mesmerising and at times ferocious album, reportedly much-admired by Beck and Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore. Coming hard on the heels of their eponymous debut--which found them a little too much under the spell of Led Zeppelin--this was the first work to approximate, in sonic terms, the group's loftier ambitions: the group and producer Roy Thomas Baker painstakingly multi-tracking vocals and guitar tracks, so as to achieve an appropriately orchestral richness of sound. The subsequent album, Sheer Heart Attack, would see them borrow from Noel Coward and the English music hall, but the sources here are more self-consciously literary; and while the result can occasionally seem too precious by half--lyrically, tracks like "The Fairy Feller's Masterstroke" and "Ogre Battle" (both Freddie Mercury compositions) betray the influence of too much Tolkien and Richard Dadd--in terms of musicianship, arrangements and melodic invention, this constitutes a staggering achievement.