Queens of the Stone Age - Lullabies to Paralyze: Album Review

Queens of the Stone Age, Lullabies to Paralyze (Interscope, 2005)
The Queens' last album, from either 2 or 3 years ago, was pretty popular as far as rock albums are concerned. Dave Grohl put the Foo Fighters aside to play drums on it, which I'm sure helped, and there were pretty cool videos on MTV for at least 2 of the songs from it. If they had been thinking, they probably would've released this follow-up a long time ago to capitalize on some of that momentum. But you know how those rock guys are; they were probably trippin' balls all last year.

THIS LULLABY

This intro reminds me of something from Kill Bill Vol. 2. All it needs is some voice-over action from David Carradine about killing motherfuckers.

MEDICATION

The actual rockin' section starts out swell enough with this song that sounds more or less like most of the songs from their last album, only minus a little bit of the edge.

EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT YOU ARE INSANE

I'm sure part of it has to do with having a different drummer on this, but I think a lot of it has to do with the production, which is oddly smoothed-out sounding. Even during the more rockin' parts, it just doesn't have that same dynamic edge that you'd expect from heavier music. In that sense, I'd actually compare it to that last Foo Fighters album, only less teh ghey of course.

TANGLED UP IN PLAID

The title is, I'm assuming, a reference to the old Bob Dylan song, "Tangled up in Blue," but the actual music doesn't bear much of a resemblence. I don't know if the "plaid" aspect of this is some sort of reference to the grunge era, but this song employs a pretty obvious Nirvana-style loud-soft dynamic, which is always cool.

BURN THE WITCH

In fact, now that I think of it, pretty much all of these songs are working that same old formula. Maybe that's why they all work so well, for me at least. The main selling point for this group though, as far as I'm concerned, is the lead vocalist Josh Homme's weird falsetto voice, which he busts out on pretty much every song - sometimes during the verse and sometimes during the chorus.

IN MY HEAD

The songwriting takes a noticeable dip after the first 4 or 5 songs, but not enough so that you'd be compelled to get and turn the shit off... at least until you get to side 2. I suppose if you were really fucked up, then you might just want to ride this baby all the way out, but substance abuse is no excuse for bad music.

LITTLE SISTER

This one, which may or may not feauture a different fellow singing lead, is one of the more decidedly retro-sounding of the album's 15 songs. I'd try to give you an idea of what it sounds like, but I'm really not that old.

I NEVER CAME

Track 8 is probably the most mellowed-out joint on the whole album. Just based on the first 7 tracks, I kinda expected it to all of a sudden rock out during the chorus, but it doesn't, really. Which is not to say that I found it pussy-sounding or anything. It's probably the last really good song on here.

SOMEONE'S IN THE WOLF

Eww! Track 9 starts out sounding like some old Creed song from 4 or 5 years ago. It never gets that bad again, but it does go on, unnecessarily, for 7+ minutes. Skip!

THE BLOOD IS LOVE

Track 10 is both almost as bad and almost as long as track 9. Between the 2 of them, with 9 being really bad and 10 not being much better, this was the moment when I was pretty much compelled to reach for the eject button.

SKIN ON SKIN

Track 11 has a plodding tempo and one of those dumbass "I'm shouting next to the mic, instead of into the mic - look how cool I am," effects on the vocals.

BROKEN BOX

There's a Lenny Kravitz song that sounds just like this. Need I say more?

"YOU GOT A KILLER SCENE THERE, MAN..."

Where as the other really mellowed-out song on here still worked musically, this one just kinda drags. The lack of a sufficient amount of noise also helps you notice how silly the song's lyrics are. "I just curse the sun so I can howl at the moon?" Riiight.

LONG SLOW GOODBYE

This wouldn't have been a bad finale had they ended the album at, say 10 songs. I suppose it still is a pretty good "end of the album" song.

(HIDDEN FINALE)

But wait there's more - sort of. I guess this is meant to serve as the opposite book-end to the opening Kill Bill music. I'm not sure how necessary it was though.

COMMENTS: Having only heard Songs for the Deaf once or twice (and then probably not under the best of circumstances, if you know what I mean), I can't recall whether or not it was like this album in that it started off pretty good and then got really shitty before it was all over, but I do know that the better moments from that album are way better than the best moments on this. Which would lead me to suggest that if you think you might be into this group, you'd might as well start with it. This album is pretty similar stylistically, but they obviously ran out of good songwriting ideas about 5 or 6 tracks in and really just stopped caring for the last 3 or 4 songs.