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The Mexican radio plays in your car, a desolate and desert landscape with scattered cacti and rocks everywhere, suddenly, QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE get in the car. The journey begins, and with its songs, it will make you...deaf!
The gear immediately grates, the car shoots "on the road" with the furious "You think I ain't worth a dollar but I feel like a millionaire" that burns your fuel and triggers in your mind a corrosive chain reaction that makes your rationality explode, prompting you with "No One Knows" to hit a moose crossing the road, without bothering to brake and help it.
The grim "A song For the Dead" will think about pitying and celebrating its silent death. And while "The sky is Fallin'" (The sky is Fallin') due to the destructive riffs of Josh Homme's guitar, dear Nick Olivieri improvises as a "Six Shooter" and fires wildly out the car window with a violence only his voice can fully convey. But it's just a momentary lapse of sanity before Mark Lanegan starts to restore calm inside the vehicle, with his warm and deep voice, as he sings his "Hangin Tree" accompanied by his indispensable cigarette from which he draws his oxygen.
With "Go with the Flow" the breeze coming through the windows tangles the hair of the Queens, used to songs like these, powerful, simple, and effective but capable of unsettling from the first to the last listen.
As the car begins a steep climb between the rocks and boulders of a mountain where the road winds, two other songs burst out from the car's dusty speakers, fast-paced pieces, lacking the murderous malice of the first tracks, but pleasant to listen to.
All of a sudden, God himself seems to emanate from the radio, accompanied by the intermittent notes of Olivieri's bass and the blues-tex mex vocal duet of Homme and Lanegan, unfortunately, though, space in the car is full, and he too must make room for "another love song" (Another Love Song) which, with its 60s-70s aftertaste lets you savor even a duel between an organ and an electric guitar that seem to blend together into a single sound.
Poor Dave Grohl seems to have just woken up from the journey that made him deaf due to the strength and impetus with which he has wielded the skins of his drums, and just for him, the group gathers, intoning "A Song For The Deaf".
When the car finally brakes, the night has fallen, but the Queens are still full of life, and around the fire, they gift you a song dedicated to a spirit (what a coincidence) "Mosquito Song", infused with acoustic guitar and piano; afterwards, all merry and heartened by the day spent together, they let loose to the rhythm of the upbeat "Everybody's Gonna Be Happy".
If there were more trips like this, we would all truly be happier, even though it seems that the Queens, lately, are regressing more and more, to the point of reaching "Era Vulgaris" which no longer pleases and sounds too old.
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
01 You Think I Ain't Worth a Dollar, but I Feel Like a Millionaire ()
Dead bull with the life from the low
I’ll be massive conquistador
Give me soul and show me the door
Metal heavy, soft at the core
Gimme toro, gimme some more
Pressurize, neutralize
Deep fried, gimme some more
Space flunky, four on the floor
Fortified with the liqour store
This one's down, gimme some more
Gimme toro, gimme some more
Shrunken head I love to adore
B-movie, gimme some gore
Gimme toro, gimme some more
B-movie, gimme some gore
Gimme toro, gimme some more
03 Do It Again ()
I fall over, and over and over, over oh I want you
I get in, I get in, I get in you're the only one I'm into
You and me fit so tight
I go lower and lower and lower, lower living easy
I don't know how long I got till it's over
You and me fit so tight
Can you do it again?
do it again
do it again
can you do it again?
All the way, all the way, all the way
there's no where left we can be
I'm into what you do but I leave you nowhere
You and me fit so tight
All we need is one more time
Can you do it again?
do it again
do it again
can you do it again?
do it again
do it again
can you do it again?
Only get to live one life
Won't pretend you're only mine
Where will you go when
We all fall away?
So do it again
do it again(x5)
08 Hangin' Tree ()
Would you like our way home
I bleed my own
Round the hangin tree
Swayin in the breeze
In the summer sun
As we two are one
Swayin
Can you see under my thumb
There you are
Round the hangin tree
Swing in the breeze
In the summer sun
As we two are one
Swing
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Other reviews
By uffa
The more I listen to it, the more I like it. The more I like it, the more excited I get!
There’s something for everyone, both for those who love the old or early QOTSA and for those who appreciated the more recent empirical evolutions.
By rebelde
Songs For The Deaf is like a great, immense pleasant effort, almost a lengthy musical earthquake inexplicably capable of causing anxiety, but also of relaxing.
A rock album doesn’t necessarily need explanations, nor does it propose to offer any... we never speak of absolute truths, only truths shot out as they exist in the artist’s brain.
