this is not pitchfork

(Where QOTSA becomes the first band to have its entire studio catalog reviewed)

I heard about this album long before I actually heard it. I enjoyed Kyuss and was pretty much infatuated with Josh Homme, but for some reason I hesitated to buy this. Then my buddy at Mr. Cheapo’s records – who always seemed to know what I would like – talked me into buying the CD.

It was late fall, maybe early winter of 1998. Either there was some kind of meteor shower going on or I was just into stargazing late at night in the cold. I don’t know why I did this, I just remember I did. I took my CD Walkman and a blanket, went out to the backyard in the middle of the night and laid back on a lounge chair while I stared at the stars and listened to Queens of the Stone Age.

You know how if you stare at the night sky long enough, everything changes? You can see more stars, or single out stars or planets or see shapes in the stars other than the constellations. The sky is an ever changing canvas and what you make of the stars and planets and even airplanes is the art. That sky I was staring at was the perfect metaphor for what I was listening to.

I played it three times and each time I heard different things, different sounds. This was undefinable because it kept changing on me; the underlying feel was one of a rock album, but there were so many things within, all this spacey, robotic sound piled on top of melodies and riffs that were at turns soothing and then jolting. I’d focus on one sound, one bass line or drum beat and then it would be something else entirely, dragging in all the other sounds around it to make a cosmic constellation of music. The album was a rocket that took me on a ride through outer space, shooting through fiery galaxies and rotating planets and shooting stars.

I’m not saying I had an out of body experience listening to QOTSA. Maybe an out of mind experience, though.

There are very few albums that can do for me what Rated R does. Listening from start to finish, it takes me to places that mind altering substances used to. It’s strange, it’s trippy, it’s a meandering ride through a funhouse tunnel, filled with twists and turns and sights and sounds that make you wish the ride would never end. Everything is unexpected; one minute you’re traveling at the speed of light and then suddenly you’re slowing down, you get a chance to collect your thoughts and breath before the ride whips up to speed again. There’s everything on this ride – highs and lows, love and pain, hallucinations and a mean reality.

There’s so much going on here that the album left my head spinning the first time I listened to it. The musical influences are so myriad – punk, metal, jazz, pop, psychedelic – that you have to completely open your mind in order to listen to and appreciate everything within. Better Living Through Chemistry is trippy fuzziness. Auto Pilot is melodic and soothing. Tension Head and Quick and to the Pointless are metal influenced punk. There are very few bands who could take so many sounds, put them on one album and make it all sound seamless. Queens of the Stone Age are masters at that. They can go from a singable pop number like Lost Art of Keeping a Secret to the strange funk of Leg of Lamb and it all just flows together like it was meant to be.

Rated R is a long, strange trip. While QOTSA are so often referred to as Stoner Rock, the beautiful thing about them and this album in particular is that you don’t need to be high to enjoy it; the music IS the drug.

Favorite song:

This QOTSA album features Dave Grohl and Mark Lanegan. Musically, it’s the strongest QOTSA album.

You know, I try hard not to fan-girl gush when I review a QOTSA album, but it’s hard not to. Not when they produce such perfection, such musical bliss and flawless entertainment as this.

See, I did it again. Fair notice. My QOTSA reviews are over the top.

While all the other QOTSA albums can be played at whatever volume you like, in whatever setting you want, Songs for the Deaf was meant to be played at maximum volume, in your car. In fact, the running theme of the record – peppered with radio bits between songs – is a drive through the desert with the radio on. And you can just feel it as you listen to song after song, imagining that there are washed out cow skulls and menacing cactus out your window instead of steel and concrete. It’s hot as hell and even the wind that blows in through the open windows is like the devil’s breath on your neck so you drive faster and faster and play the music louder and louder as the desert zooms by you, at times threatening (Song for the Dead), at times exhilarating (Do it Again) and in between all that is an oasis of pure bliss (Go With the Flow). This album can turn any traffic-clogged, road rage type drive home into a hallucinogenic ride through some wasteland.

The pounding drums and melodic rhythms will work you into a frenzy and just as you’re about to convert that frenzy into road rage, remembering that you’re not actually driving through a desert, there’s a break between songs, an ironic little sound burst about how much the radio sucks and you catch your breath, laugh knowingly and wait for the next song to invade your senses.

Grohl’s relentless drumming, the constant change up of styles, the absolute heaviness coupled with amazing melodies; from the hoarse screams of You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar, to the sweet orchestration of the dark, disturbing Mosquito Song, Songs for the Deaf is a pure joy ride of perfection.

Favorite song: Go With the Flow (I want something good to die for to make it beautiful to live – one of my favorite lines ever), accompanied by the Best video ever made: Go With the Flow

There’s not much I can do with QOTSA albums except review them like normal.It’s very hard to write about a band you love so much because all you want to do is gush about the songs and force people to listen to them. There’s no big stories to go with these albums either, because they are a constant soundtrack. Not a day goes by when I don’t listen to at least one QOTSA album in full.

This album has it all. It’s part wicked fairytale, part deluded romanticism. LTP opens with Mark Lanegan and the creepy, yet mesmerizing This Lullaby and careens through a slew of musical styles until it ends with Josh Homme’s melancholy voice on Long, Slow Goodbye. In between you have Everybody Knows That You’re Insane, a bluesy piece that invokes a smoky barroom. There’s the ominous sounding Burn the Witch which features Billy Gibbons playing some killer riffs (and also includes Jack Black hand claps). The pop-perfect In My Head is everything that was awesome about 70s radio hits. There’s the wistful, almost mournful I Never Came and the deep and dark Someone’s in the Wolf, which makes me think of being lost in the woods in some warped bedtime story. The Blood is Love is all spacey, like something you should listen to with a bong and a black light in someone’s basement, as is the groovy You’ve Got a Killer Scene There Man. The awesome Broken Box is vulgar spitefulness set to a danceable, ass-shaking, hand clapping beat. Then Long, Slow Goodbye, haunting song in which Homme does an amazing job of conveying the sadness within.

I could say this is my favorite QOTSA album, but that would be true for only today. It varies, depending on my mood.

Favorite song: Broken Box (today)
The Fade

(Side note: you will find that the QOTSA reviews will tend to be longer than most and more like actual reviews, simply because they are my favorite band and I tend to get carried away when discussing their albums)

There’s always trepidation when your favorite band puts out a new album. All the anticipation you’ve built up makes you almost not want to listen to the album when you finally get it in your hands. Or maybe that’s just me. I just hate being disappointed by bands I love. So when I sat down to listen to Era Vulgaris for the first time, I remembered how I felt upon first hearing the previous album, Lullabies to Paralyze. I hated it. It was missing the decadence of Nick Oliveri. But, I grew to love it eventually. I guess it’s like having an ugly baby. At first you’re horrified, then you learn to find the beauty within it.

At first I was ambivalent about Era. I didn’t know if I liked it, hated it, loved it. I put it away after the first listen and let it soak in. Then I put it in the car and listened to it over and over again while we drove around Long Island one weekend on a photo taking/authentic Mexican food finding spree. There were songs that I kept repeating: Suture up Your Future, 3’s & 7’s, Into the Hollow. And I loved the rendition of Make it Wit Chu, a song previously heard on Desert Sessions. More importantly, there were no songs I skipped.

Each QOTSA album is completely different from the others. I know that sounds like a “no shit” statement, but with a lot of bands, you get the same sound, different lyrics on their albums. With QOTSA, each new effort is like discovering a new genre within one band, or a new band within that band (which sort of holds true as the lineup for this band changes so often, and there are so many guests artists on each album).

Era Vulgaris is deeper musically than any of the previous titles. While lyrically it’s not as tight as some of the earlier work, there’s a lot of introspection here and enough thoughtfulness to keep the words as interesting as the music. The music itself is full, broad and encompasses so many different styles that it’s hard to get sick of this album; even after a hundred repeated plays over a two day period, I was still hearing things in songs I didn’t hear previously.

It’s not my favorite album of theirs, but it is a great album.

Favorite song: Suture up Your Future (live, acoustic version)
An awesome QOTSA fan site