Queens of the Stone Age: Songs for the Deaf (2002)
When Dave Grohl asks if he can join your band, “pretty please,” you know that band must rank among the coolest, most exciting on the planet, and that’s precisely the cache Queens of the Stone Age were enjoying around the time of their third studio album, Songs for the Deaf.
Released 20 years ago this month, this was a worthy successor to the group’s year 2000 sophomore breakthrough, Rated R, mirroring its eclectic, idiosyncratic creativity, while mimicking a radio-soundtracked nighttime drive across the California desert, complete with numerous fictional DJs.
Of course, terrestrial radio rarely, if ever, sounded this good, this twisted, this unpredictable, so all you kids under 25 out there, don’t be fooled into false airwave nostalgia, and all of you under 15s living in all-you-can-eat streaming utopia, don’t waste time trying to comprehend this archaic technology.
But I digress ...
Though I still can’t pick my favorite amongst Rated R, Songs for the Deaf, or the band’s underrated self-titled debut, I think we can all agree this was the ultimate Q.O.T.S.A. line-up, pairing Grohl with vocalist/guitarist Josh Homme, bassist/vocalist Nick Oliveri, and occasional frontman Mark Lanegan. (*)
Certainly, it took a lot of musical chemistry to weld together so many strange sounds with such seamless efficiency and power.
Mind you, some of these songs (“You Think I Ain’t Worth a Dollar, But I Feel Like a Millionaire,” “Hangin’ Tree”) had already been recorded for the Homme-led Desert Sessions, but they fit right in with the bold new works composed especially for this not-quite-magnum opus.
Highlights ranged from swinging single “No One Knows,” to the piano-tinkled “Go with the Flow,” and the relentless “First It Giveth,” to the post-stoner rocker “Do it Again ” and lysergic grooves of “God is in the Radio,” to the ominous, absolutely terrifying title track. (**)
Toss in outliers like the Oliveri-penned surf rocker “Another Love Song,” the grunge raga “The Sky is Fallin’,” and the subdued, almost classical “Mosquito Song” (whose lyrics preemptively name the Queens’ next album, Lullabies to Paralyze), and Songs for the Deaf is indeed a ”trip into the heart of darkness.”
But I felt nothing but euphoria when I caught this short-lived supergroup formation of Q.O.T.S.A. at New York City’s Bowery Ballroom, back in 2002, and here’s the best part: the show is now available on YouTube, so get ready to miss this incredible group (plus the recently deceased Lanegan) all over again.
* Backed by several crucial session players, including the multi-talented couple of Alain Johannes (lap steel, e-bow, organ, piano, flamenco guitar, theremin) and Natasha Shneider (e-bow, organ, piano, theremin), formerly of alt-rockers Eleven.
** As I wrote in a Loudwire article entitled -- get this! -- ‘50 Disturbing Songs that People Love,’ its “sinister melodies, Homme’s ghostly falsetto and vague rhymes skirted the obvious and suggested, there’s a big difference between not being able to hear and simply not listening.”
More Queens of the Stone Age: Queens of the Stone Age, Rated R, Lullabies to Paralyze, Era Vulgaris, … Like Clockwork.
