FEATURE:
A Buyer’s Guide
Part Four: Queens of the Stone Age
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WHEN I was thinking about an artist…
for the next part of this feature, I wanted to move back into band territory. There are groups like Fleetwood Mac and Beastie Boys who I will address in the coming weeks but, right now, I wanted to take a closer look at one of my favourite bands ever: the mighty Queens of the Stone Age. I have been listening to them since the 1990s, and they continue to produce sensational music. I am not sure what the future holds for them, but I do hope we get more albums from the American group. If you are new to Queens of the Stone Age, I have compiled a list that should help you get to the bottom of their brilliant sound. Here is my guide to a band who, on every album, bring something…
IN THIS PHOTO: Queens of the Stone Age in 2018/PHOTO CREDIT: Oliver Halfin
TRULY awesome.
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The Four Essential Albums
Rated R
Release Date: 6th June, 2000
Label: Interscope
Producers: Chris Goss/Joshua Homme
Standout Tracks: Feel Good Hit of the Summer/The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret/Tension Head
Buy: https://ukstore.qotsa.com/products/rated-r-reissue-l
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/05tJhGl52X4zGe0ySlcBk6
Review:
“The second Queens of the Stone Age album, Rated R (as in the movie rating; its title was changed from II at the last minute before release), makes its stoner rock affiliations clear right from the opening track. The lyrics of "Feel Good Hit of the Summer" consist entirely of a one-line list of recreational drugs that Josh Homme rattles off over and over, a gag that gets pretty tiresome by the end of the song (and certainly doesn't need the reprise that follows "In the Fade"). Fortunately, the rest of the material is up to snuff. R is mellower, trippier, and more arranged than its predecessor, making its point through warm fuzz-guitar tones, ethereal harmonies, vibraphones, horns, and even the odd steel drum. That might alienate listeners who have come to expect a crunchier guitar attack, but even though it's not really aggro, R is still far heavier than the garage punk and grunge that inform much of the record. It's still got the vaunted California-desert vibes of Kyuss, but it evokes a more relaxed, spacious, twilight feel, as opposed to a high-noon meltdown. Mark Lanegan and Barrett Martin of the Screaming Trees both appear on multiple tracks, and their band's psychedelic grunge -- in its warmer, less noisy moments -- is actually not a bad point of comparison. Longtime Kyuss fans might be disappointed at the relative lack of heaviness, but R's direction was hinted at on the first QOTSA album, and Homme's experimentation really opens up the band's sound, pointing to exciting new directions for heavy guitar rock in the new millennium” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: Monsters in the Parasol
Songs for the Deaf
Release Date: 27th August, 2002
Label: Interscope
Producers: Josh Homme/Adam Kasper/Eric Valentine
Standout Tracks: A Song for the Dead/Go with the Flow/God Is In the Radio
Buy: https://ukstore.qotsa.com/products/songs-for-deaf-reissue
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/4w3NeXtywU398NYW4903rY
Review:
“What crazies Queens of the Stone Age are. With one perv-dwarf (Nick Oliveri: bass, cock-flashing) and one freak-Elvis (Josh Homme: guitar/vocals, spookiness), they became almost famous in 2000 with Rated R, a psychedelic-retro hard-rock masterwork. Their “nicotine, Valium, Vicodin, marijuana, Ecstasy and alcohol” chant in “Feel Good Hit of the Summer” made them critics’ faves, a cheeky diversion from the hand-wringing moan of millennial nü-metal. With Songs for the Deaf — dudes, you’re killing us! — the odd couple will be taken much more seriously. QOTSA 2002 have added former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl, ex–Screaming Trees singer Mark Lanegan and comedy-rock dweeb Dean Ween. Pushed by Grohl, the Greatest Living Rock Drummer, this post-grunge commune utterly revels in classic-rock gestures. Deaf kicks off by resurrecting the robo-punker “Millionaire” (previously on the fifth volume of their Desert Sessions side project), then stretches out with “No One Knows” (a Britpop strut/fuzz-rock hybrid) and “First It Giveth” (tumbling with falsetto verses and a pummeling chorus), which demonstrate QOTSA’s canny songwriting. While clichés abound, from druggy references (“We get these pills to swallow/How they stick in your throat/Taste like gold”) to ballistic drum breaks that seem to arise from John Bonham’s coffin, this huge music is delivered with panache. By the time Lanegan croaks “Song for the Dead” and “Song for the Deaf,” both Arabic-gone-goth grooves that conjure visions of Black Sabbath rockin’ the pyramids, you can only smile. Bong-blitzed teens will still dig Queens, but the pop smarts of “Go With the Flow” and “Another Love Song” (a pristine slice of ’60s psychedelia-lite) could also position Songs for the Deaf as crossover metal, if the world is willing to embrace Homme and Oliveri’s freaky faces. QOTSA execute their hoary AOR moves with irony and conviction, having fun while making fun, creating a world where every month is Rocktober” – Blender
Choice Cut: No One Knows
Lullabies to Paralyze
Release Date: 21st March, 2005
Label: Interscope
Producers: Joe Barresi/Joshua Homme
Standout Tracks: Everybody Knows That You Are Insane/In My Head/The Blood Is Love
Buy: https://thesoundofvinyl.com/*/*/Lullabies-To-Paralyze-Deluxe-Reissue/6A6L0000000
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/2OMdsA2I4RxrHCyogwKGvF
Review:
“The blurb for Lullabies to Paralyse compares it to a pagan ritual involving woodland dancing around a campfire. If anything, the album is more disturbing. Full of unsettling undercurrents, it is something like Bowie's Diamond Dogs fused with Blair Witch Project.
Ostensibly, this follow-up to 2002's fab Songs for the Deaf documents the bitter split between frontman Josh Homme and his childhood friend/creative foil Nick Olivieri, best known for performing naked; it's not difficult to guess who is the target of the chorus of Everybody Knows That You're Insane. However, Homme has emerged with the best songs of his career.
Lullabies splits between twisted, skewed rock anthems and eerie reveries such as the whispery Someone's in the Wolf. The songs' interest level is heightened by aural mind games: sounds of what could be devil worship, and at least one audible "stabbing".
Play it loud and hold on to the seat of your pants” – The Guardian
Choice Cut: Burn the Witch
…Like Clockwork
Release Date: 3rd June, 2013
Label: Matador
Producers: Dean Fertita/Josh Homme/James Lavelle/Michael Shuman/Troy Van Leeuwen
Standout Tracks: I Sat by the Ocean/Smooth Sailing/I Appear Missing
Buy: https://ukstore.qotsa.com/products/copy-of-like-clockwork-standard-vinyl
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/06S2JBsr4U1Dz3YaenPdVq
Review:
“The same filthy feeling abounds on the ferocious but perfectly polished ‘Smooth Sailing’. “I’m in flagrante/In every way”, confesses Josh, before adding, almost as an afterthought, “I blow my load over the status quo”. Quite. Yet there’s also a more meditative flipside to ‘…Like Clockwork’. ‘The Vampyre Of Time And Memory’ is a startlingly low-key piano hymnal, even with its flashes of Giorgio Moroder synths and cocaine-soul guitar solo. Its confessional lyrics, set against a twisted power ballad melody, come on like an even more fucked-up Fleetwood Mac. “Does anyone ever get this right?/I feel no love”, purrs Josh. ‘Kalopsia’, featuring Reznor, is another haunting slow jam, but pulls a flick-knife chorus on you, amping up the menace with eerie backing vocals that echo the melancholy “sha-bop- sha-bop”s of The Flamingos’ version of skulking doo-wop ode ‘I Only Have Eyes For You’.
‘…Like Clockwork’ closes with the title track, perhaps the least QOTSA-sounding song ever. If MGM are hunting the next Bond movie theme creator, this should swing it for Josh, as he indulges his dexterous falsetto, channelling the sweeping, string-laden ’60s scores of John Barry, with production help with the man from UNKLE, James Lavelle. Last year, Biffy Clyro’s Simon Neil praised Queens Of The Stone Age for their ability to make sexy records. “Which I think is hard to do in a rock band,” he said. That’s because Queens Of The Stone Age aren’t most rock bands – they’re the rock band” – NME
Choice Cut: My God Is the Sun
The Underrated Gem
Era Vulgaris
Release Date: 12th June, 2007
Labels: Interscope/Rekords Rekords
Producers: The Fififf Teeners (Chris Goss & Josh Homme)
Standout Tracks: Misfit Love/Make It wit Chu/Suture Up Your Future
Buy: https://ukstore.qotsa.com/products/era-vulgaris-lp
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/1w71aBHYJ1zTOsSsmr2Fca
Review:
“This is a band, after all, who have made a virtue of trying everything. A heavy rock band whose personal mythology is built on songs like their excellent Feel Good Hit Of The Summer (essentially a list of drugs Homme had consumed), and whose music has encompassed jazz and polka, Queens are a group whose superb music is the product of enquiring, if hedonistic minds.
It’s a policy that has brought them great success (the triumphant Songs For The Deaf Album, anchored around contributions from then-singer Mark Lanegan), and personal upheaval (founder member Nick Oliveri was sacked for transgressing too far into unacceptable behaviour), but this flexible attitude towards nearly everything is maintained rigidly here.
Produced by long-time associate and godfather figure of Californian desert rock Chris Goss, there are textbook moments of monolithic rock music here - the hypnotic ‘Turning On The Screw’, the woozy ‘Suture Up Your Future’ and seduction slow jam ‘Make It Witchu’.
Perversely, though, Homme calls this a dance record – and Battery ‘Acid” and “Misfit Love” are both shot through with the band’s own noisy interpretation of the genre.
Whatever the sources they plunder, though, here Queens Of The Stone Age perform in the same way they have throughout their career: they continue to find some clever ways to do a pretty dumb thing. It’s true, our generation may occasionally be clouded by indecision, and have its palette jaded by too much choice. Era Vulgaris, though, is a demonstration in how originality can still find a way to shine through” – Uncut
Choice Cut: Sick, Sick, Sick
The Latest/Final Album
Villains
Release Date: 25th August, 2017
Label: Matador
Producers: Mark Ronson/Mark Rankin
Standout Tracks: The Way You Used to Do/Head Like a Haunted House/The Evil Has Landed
Buy: https://ukstore.qotsa.com/products/villains
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2BYzDMKPFvl3ie7ci5G6wk
Review:
“The first place he moves to is a complete surprise. The rasping, buzzy riff of “The Way You Used To Do” has serious offhand cool, a snazzy sort of sound punctuated with handclaps, all handled with a swingy panache that even Elvis would recognise as rock’n’roll – which wouldn’t usually be the case with heavy rock. The strut-stomp “Domesticated Animals” and moody “Fortress” head back to the darkness, the former’s warning that “today is the day the wilderness comes to reclaim everything” segueing via strings into the latter’s equally cheery observation that “everyone faces darkness on their own”. But gloom is swiftly dispelled by the frantic “Head Like A Haunted House”, which bristles with euphoric determination. With a wheedling theremin squeal chasing its shrill riff, it’s the most headlong, pell-mell piece here.
Towards the album’s end, a trio of songs hint at influences lurking beneath the surface. The complex, heavy riff of “The Evil Has Landed” is pure “Trampled Underfoot”, but ultimately subsumed by a slicker funk-rock groove. Less expected is “Villains Of Circumstance”, a heavy-hearted separation plaint sung by Homme with a wan vulnerability that recall Bernard Sumner. “Miss you now, what’s come over me/Hostages of geography,” he laments, over an arrangement of subdued trepidation occasionally teetering into furtive hope. It’s quite charming, and its winsome modesty provides a pleasing counterbalance to the brash “Un-Reborn Again”, which, I kid you not, is like a slowed-down “Telegram Sam” sung by the Bowie of “The Man Who Sold The World”. Extraordinary!” – The Independent
Choice Cut: Domesticated Animals
The Queens of the Stone Age Book
Queens of the Stone Age: No One Knows
Author: Joel McIver
Publication Date: 18th March, 2015
Publisher: Omnibus Press
Synopsis:
“This updated edition of the first ever book about Queens Of The Stone Age takes in nine years of chaos. Since the first edition appeared in 2005, Josh Homme's band has undergone multiple line-up changes, toured the world and released two acclaimed albums. They have taken on a new version of Homme's old band Kyuss in court and helped to spawn multiple projects such as Them Crooked Vultures and a supergroup featuring Homme, Foo Fighters singer Dave Grohl and Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. Along the way there have been death, near-death and physical confrontations of all kinds, with Homme's near-fatal asphyxiation during a knee operation in 2010 almost ending the band. Want to know about the pitfalls of being in a rock band? Read it all here...” – Waterstones
Buy: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00OQEA58I/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1