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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Near-Perfect Album, 4 Oct 2003
This review is from: Desert Session 9&10/Desert Sessions (Audio CD)
Josh Homme is best known as the genius behind Queens Of The Stone Age, one of the greatest rock bands of recent times. But the singer, songwriter and expert guitarist also works on numerous low-key side projects, including the Desert Sessions - a collaborative effort where he recruits some of his musican friends to spend a week writing and recording a full album’s worth of material in one week at the Rancho De La Luna studio in Joshua Tree, California. Volume 9 & 10 is the latest installment of the Desert Sessions series, and the guest list is more interesting than ever: QOTSA bandmates Joey Castillo and Troy Van Leeuwen, past QOTSA contributors Dave Catching and Alain Johannes, Masters Of Reality frontman and Rated R producer Chris Goss, ex-Marilyn Manson/A Perfect Circle guitarist Twiggy Ramirez, Ween maestro Dean Ween and English rock goddess PJ Harvey. And the results are not disappointing. In fact, Desert Sessions 9 & 10 is a must for all QOTSA fans.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.
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~ Kyuss
~ Kyuss
~ Kyuss
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