Lesser Known Classics #2: Queens of the Stone Age - Songs for the Deaf Jul 26 2008

This is the second post in my series on classic albums that perhaps don’t get the recognition they deserve. The first in the series was about Rufio’s masterpiece, MCMLXXXV.

This post is about the Queens of the Stone Age album, Songs for the Deaf. Now it’d be hard to argue that QotSA are “lesser known” – they are a huge, well recognized band within the rock world, and have been making great music for a little over ten years now. Songs for the Deaf itself got critical and commercial acclaim, and achieved gold status. However, it seems that truly classic albums rarely leave the rock and roll consciousness, and are used as a milestone to compare other albums too – and Songs for the Deaf, unfortunately, doesn’t appear to be held in that regard. I think it should be.

Unlike the Rufio album in the first post I made, I can’t honestly say I think each and every song on the album is a winner – the difference here is that there are a number of mind blowingly brilliant songs that just makes the entire album a classic, and all of the songs seamlessly flow into each other, making the whole thing an audio experience to behold.

The superb opening song (“You Think I Aint Worth A Dollar But I Feel Like A MIllionaire”) sets up the entire record. Beginning with sound effects of someone entering a car, and continuing with the car radio DJ introducing the album – “I need a saga – what’s the saga? It’s Songs for the Deaf. You can’t even hear it”. The album is indeed an epic saga, and “Songs for the Deaf” alludes to QotSA’s comical, zany nature that shows throughout all of their work.

Of course, this album is special as Dave Grohl did the guest drums, and immediately after the DJ introduction, a heavy drum beat sets up a hard rocking opening song that really buzzes. With a great rhythm, the song just feels right. The guitar work on this track is brilliant too, and it’s one of those songs that you can imagine must be an absolute riot to play live on stage.

Immediately following this breathtaking opening is the first single from the album, “No One Knows”. Again with a great drum beat laid down by the mastermind Mr Grohl, it’s very catchy, and very cool. Not too heavy, but it was a great vehicle for the album, and the kind of song that gets stuck in your head for days at a time. Another single, “First It Giveth” follows, a lot heavier than “No One Knows”, and while not as catchy, it’s another winner. More big drums, and this time with a more impressive bass line – it also incorporates acoustic elements for the bridges in the song, which gives the song a stop-start melody that’s more than a little interesting.

“A Song For The Dead” follows that track, and again revolves around an incredible drum beat, and some brilliant guitar work. While a lot of the tracks on this album follow the same pattern (and why not, when you have Josh Homme on the axe, and Dave Grohl on drums?), it never seems to be overly repetitive. This song builds up and builds up as it progresses, and reaches epic proportions towards the end of the fifth minute, as it slides into an epic guitar frenzy with the same guitar and drum melody that opened the track, this time on steroids. By the time the song is done (it’s almost six minutes long), you feel drained.

What follows almost feels like a bit of a rest and relaxation period for the album, after the frenetic opening. It’s not that the following songs are bad, they just simply couldn’t keep up with the album’s first four tracks. Luckily though, the album again switches it up a notch when we get to the best track on the album (and one of my favourite songs of all time) – “Go With The Flow”. Contrary to some of the other, mammoth tracks on the record, this weighs in at just over three minutes. However this is perhaps the only area that the track comes up short, as it delivers in every other department. Once again tying musical mischief together are the guitar and drums, setting the stage for a fairly heavy track, but one that still feels melodic. “I can go, with the flow” sings Homme, and it’s obvious by this point that he’s right. The entire album is about flow, and about the songs tying together to form something that is bigger than the sum of its parts. It is in fact this song that seems to define the album for me, being a reference point for all of the brilliant aspects that it incorporates. Special mention must also be made for the amazing video that was put out for this video as this song too was a single. The video is a dark, comic-like affair, that seems to take place on a hellish highway. It’s not particularly subtle in the end, but the video and song work together better than any I’ve ever seen.

It’s true that the rest of the album doesn’t feel as good from here on out – but I think that is almost certainly down to the quality of the songs that precede the final ones, the ending songs themselves are easy to listen to and do a great job of supporting the real star tracks on this record. It’s worth mentioning the closing “Mosquito Song” though, which is a fantastic way to end the record, favouring a slower, quieter acoustic sound over the heavy drums and guitar that laid to waste the first 50 minutes. It puts the excesses in perspective, and frames the entire album as a classic.

So what makes this a classic? It just seems to have it all – it sounds great, it feels great, and it has lasted the test of time – this album is now six years old, and still seems as fresh as the day I first popped it into my CD player. That surely is the true test of a classic – does it still sound as great as day one? The answer here is yes.

So what of QotSA now? They’ve had some interesting stuff happen over the last few years, with band members coming and going – but Josh Homme is still at the helm, and while the follow-up to “Songs for the Deaf”, “Lullabies to Paralyze” wasn’t up to the same standard, the more recent effort, “Era Vulgaris” comes a lot closer. It is unlikely to be a classic, but includes some really brilliant tracks, such as the first single “Sick Sick Sick”, and “3’s and 7’s”. I guess it’s a shame sometimes for a band to have such an amazing album as “Songs for the Deaf” in the middle of their career – it must make going back to the studio afterwards incredibly difficult.

If you don’t have “Songs for the Deaf”, pick it up immediately.

albums • lesser-known-classics • music • qotsa • songs-for-the-deaf