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Rating: This is not a review, it is a fact: Welcome To Sky Valley is one of the best albums ever released. It's not just stoner rock, (actually stoned rock, it fits more), it's not an album that you can simply rate with a five, you can't judge something like this. You have to lounge around and start enjoying all the sounds that will invade your neurons, this album hypnotizes you, "mescalinizes" you, pervades you, it "gets inside you", truly. Such feelings cannot be described, it is beauty filtered for uninitiated ears, "Welcome To Sky Valley" belongs to the "essential" category in music, if someone says that this album is bad, that person is automatically an idiot, even if it's Riccardo Muti.
I won't talk about the songs, there's no need, and I'm not up to it, this is not meant to be a review, I'll just tell you that this is the peak of Mr. Homme and his companions' entire career (including all their post-Kyuss incarnations, such as Qotsa, Hermano and various stuff). Not even that colossal album "Blues for the Red Sun" reaches where "Welcome To Sky Valley" pushes itself (especially since that "Blues..." was recorded like crap), only "Thong Song" is at the level of the acid and hypnotic arpeggios you will find in "Welcome To Sky Valley", the swaying and adrenaline-pumping riffs you will encounter, the suffering, alluring, and lysergic blues.
Some say that cocaine was the main source of inspiration for our desert lords, nonsense, that might make sense when we talk about Mondo Generator, but this album is pure THC and trip, nothing else. This is the album where their tendency to overdo things finds its fullest expression, or rather its fullest "extension," because these are songs that "extend" beyond anything you have ever heard before, writing psychedelic suites is an understatement, it's cerebral music with guts, it's about taking the listener away from everything that surrounds them, without sweetness, pulling them by the hair and taking them elsewhere, forcefully.
I read on this site "stoner is understood stoned," it makes sense, definitely, smoke something rough and abrasive, something that scratches your throat, lie down, and Josh will welcome you to the brightest and most exorbitant sky valley you can conceive.
Tracklist Lyrics and Videos
06 Demon Cleaner (05:19)
I've got the demons in me
I've got to brush them all way
I feel the demons rage
I must clean them all away
Yeah
It's sad to see more rage
Cobwebs in the way
That magic cleaner will shine his smile on my face
Yeah
I am the demon cleaner who saves the day
I got the back wall
Important they'll always stay
Yeah
If only one thing that you know
Imposters from the show
They'll try to trick you into
Normal treatment
Oh, don't you listen to them say
Shush them all away
I am the demon cleaner
Madman of encino
I am the freedom bleeding
Standing naked here to say
I'm the only way
07 Odyssey (04:20)
Take one to the mountain
Take one to the sea
Take one to the belly of the beast
And then you'll take one with me
Shut it (2x)
Freezing in the fires
Well I oughta howl your name
Once you return from the belly of the beast
You're never quite the same
Shut it, shut it on (2x)
Fire on the mountain
And it rages out of control
The fire inside the belly of the beast
Well it burns, then wraps your soul
Shut it, shut it on (2x)
08 Conan Troutman (02:12)
Feed my lung, flower seed
You are gone and now I'm free (I'm free - yeah)
Strip me down to nothing
Thought we would free the vulture (make it fly)
Burning my brain and burning my teeth (in the sun)
A hundred degrees and burning my need (make it fly)
Live the love that I have for you
Taking your life from off you (free)
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Other reviews
By Echoes
Reviewing this album is like trying to give an opinion on an emotion.
Welcome to Sky Valley is the synthesis of dreamlike emotions, tinged with the blues.
By rdegioann452
I simply invite anyone who hasn’t done so yet to listen to this album and do the same with the rest of their discography.
'Sky Valley' is the best among their albums, including 'Blues for the Red Sun', simply because you won’t find songs like 'Gardenia', 'Asteroid' and 'Odyssey' in the latter.
