Desert Session 9&10/Desert Sessions [Enhanced, Extra tracks]

In short this album contains something for everyone, from the insanely funky “Subcutaneous Phat” to the utterly bizarre “Sheperds Pie” (No points for guessing what this ones about!) This album is well worth a look, a marvellous creation that took a meagre 8 days to produce. Now go out and give this CD a Homme.

The opener Dead In Love is one of the standout tracks, as good a song as any Homme has set his name to. Carried by his own powerful, soulful lead vocals, it’s a heady, dizzying guitar-and-saxophone meltdown that manages to be menacing, sinister and sexy in the way that only QOTSA can. I Wanna Make It Wit Chu is an irresistably tongue-in-cheek, booty-shakin’ funk number whose chorus will be firmly lodged in your brain after one listen. Bring It Back Gentle is a relentless narcotic drone reminiscent of The Sky Is Fallin from QOTSA’s brilliant last album Songs For The Deaf.

One of Desert Sessions 9 & 10’s strongest features is the presence of the great PJ Harvey, who sings on four tracks and also plays piano, bass, saxophone, melodica and tambourine. This is the first new material Polly Jean has worked on since her masterpiece Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea three years ago, and I hope it’s an indication of where she’s heading on her next album. Her vocals are in stunning form. There Will Never Be A Better Time is a unique free-form epic in which she wails passionately over a flamenco guitar mantra that loops over and over in hypnotic circles. Powdered Wig Machine sees Harvey moaning and panting breathily like a stray cat over a warped, twisted lo-fi electronic backdrop unlike anything you’ve ever heard from QOTSA before. And then there’s the excellent first single: Crawl Home is a blistering duet between Homme and Harvey. Dark, angry and powerful, it weaves a web of gothic guitar atmospherics, densely distorted basslines and pounding industrial beats alongside a naggingly catchy chorus of “It took you such a long time to figure it out”. With its striking Hal Hartley-directed video clip (the pair in a car having a lovers’ row that turns physical), Crawl Home deserves to become a big hit.

Don’t let this sparkling little gem of an album be overlooked in favour of the usual crap that clogs up the charts, radio and MTV these days. Take a risk.

In short, its everything you would expect from the Desert Sessions & more - wildly eclectic (the brilliantly titled 'Subcutaneous Phat' is a dance record sounding not too disimilar to The Chemical Brothers), throwaway tracks like 'Shepherds Pie' (a song about shepherds pie) but mainly containg such moments of raw beauty that you just wish every record could be recorded like this one.

Magic