Stoner/Desert Rock group Queens Of The Stone Age released a new single last week, titled Easy Street. It comes off as lighter fare from Josh Homme and co, evoking the style of a tired and tweaked out David Byrne.
I have long planned to write about a QOTSA album for a while. Now seems as good a time as any!
Queens Of The Stone Age – Era Vulgaris
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I was a late comer to the music of Queens Of The Stone Age. The first song I recall hearing of theirs was a remix of No One Knows made by UNKLE. It was featured on a great snowboarding game I had on the Sony PS2 called SSX3. It was also on a James Lavelle Global Underground Mix CD. That remix still kills the original, which itself is a fun song. I only really got into them around 2005, when I saw them at the Saddledome opening for Nine Inch Nails.
QOTSA’s biggest album to date – Songs For The Deaf – came out a few years before that in 2002. I dove into that album head-first after seeing QOTSA play live. Their follow-up to that album – Lullabies To Paralyze – was just released in the summer of 2005. The big hit on Lullabies is called Little Sister, which features enough cowbell to make the likes of Christopher Walken content. Yet, it didn’t do as much for me.
Then Era Vulgaris came out in June 2007, and I was hooked from the first track. This was the band’s fifth proper album, and it was properly hard, grinding, gritty and weird.
The album starts with Turnin on the Screw, which sounds like a band trying to shift itself into high gear after a week-long bender and mostly stalling out in a wonderful fashion. I am not a lyrics guy, but I love singing along to this one thanks to its semi-sensical spoken word play and Seussian rhyme scheme.
All of the music on the album has an off-key, heavy, punk, raw quality to it. It reminds me of the abrasive and raw directness found on Nirvana’s In Utero, but instead of just being disturbed and depressed there is a goofy and ironic travelling carnival fair vibe to the works.
The carnie stylings are sort of the band’s and frontman Josh Homme’s shtick, in my opinion. The nearly 6 foot 5 inch Homme has the looks, talent, and sex appeal of Elvis crossed with a tall California surfer dude. He can dance and croon in a bit of an Elvis-like fashion, too. Not in a full-on oil slick and smarmy Chris Isaak way, but in more of a I know I look good and I can sing but I am going to dance around like a goof and not take myself too seriously manner.
Other highlights on Era Vulgaris include:
- I’m Designer – Full of ironic, eye rolling, tongue planted firmly in cheek bravado.
- Misfit Love – A grinder of a song, built around repeating dissonant guitar and bass hooks. It kills live.
- Sick Sick Sick – one of the band’s more punk styled songs.
- Make It Wit Chu – A love song, of a sort.
- 3s & 7s – Is that opening riff a riff on the opening riff of Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit? Oh well. Whatever. Nevermind. Nothing is ever as it seems with Queens Of The Stone Age.
Cheers,
Evan
You’ve got a question? Please don’t ask it
It puts the lotion in the basket
You say bigger’s better but bigger’s bigger
White boy dressed up like a figure
Drawn inside a toilet on the wall
The world is round, my square don’t fit at all
They say those who can’t just instruct others
And act like victims or jilted lovers
You can’t lose it if you never had it
Disappear man, do some magic
You want a reason? How’s about because
You ain’t a has-been if you never was