'Songs For the Deaf' cranks up melodies

By Teresa Gubbins
Associated Press

"SONGS FOR THE DEAF," Queens of the Stone Age, Interscope

The disc has some amazing tunes, hooky and addictive enough to take over your auditory pleasure center until they become an obsession, until all you can do is think QOTSA.

Do not, for example, listen to "The Sky Is Falling" unless you are willing to hand over your brain to it completely. From its opening rumbling chants and on through its relentless, repetitive rhythms, cranked steadily by a machine-like bank of guitars, this is an Instant Takeover kind of song. There exists an irresistible interplay between the driving low end and the almost falsetto quality of Homme's vocals.

And that song is just one of many. "Go With the Flow" sets its trap with an insistent, high-pitched piano riff that echoes the piano in the Buzzcocks' classic, "Something's Gone Wrong Again."

Homme and Oliveri haven't abandoned the brassy, round guitar that's been their trademark since their days as one of the first of California's "desert rock" bands. But in classic California style, they've stepped up the harmonies.

"Do It Again" is almost Beach Boys, except that the Queens are never sunny — with this band, there is always a wonderful underlying melancholy.

And they've added more instrumentation. One of the most remarkable examples comes in "Gonna Leave You," which starts out as a simple enough pop-rock song with a Foo Fighters flavor. There's a tasty-lick guitar solo in the middle, but then as it closes, a bank of French horns suddenly comes up, adding a nice, surprising heft to the end — like a lean dinner that ends with a rich dessert.

The Foo Fighters flavor is no coincidence: Foo frontman Dave Grohl plays drums on this disc, a huge bonus, since he's an incredible drummer.

Other guests include Mark Lanegan, of Seattle band Screaming Trees, with whom Homme played in the mid-'90s. Lanegan sings on four songs, but his presence is most prominent on the deliciously gloomy "Hanging Tree," which sounds just like the Screaming Trees.

This is a bit of a concept album. "Songs for the Deaf" refers to the empty music that's played on the radio. Between the tracks on this disc are little segments that sound as if they're taken from a radio station — but they're not real, and they're definitely not flattering to radio.

"We play the songs that sound more like everyone else than anyone else," says a syrupy DJ from "KLON" (as in "clone"). "We spoil music for everyone."

The Queens have never been big conformers; they have a real dark side.

As they grow more melodic, they inch closer to being radio-friendly — but for a band as subversive as the Queens, radio today is probably not an appealing place to be.