At least for the given specific example (the images not showing), the reason it fails is sql-mode “ONLY_FULL_GROUP_BY” in combination with this query.
Error: “contains nonaggregated column ‘AlbumItems.rank’ which is not functionally dependent on columns in GROUP BY clause”
Possible solution: Changing the line 'AlbumItems.rank',
to this.
'rank' => 'MAX(AlbumItems.rank)',