I remember listening to arguments in my college newspaper
\nnewsroom about Wilco and Queens of the Stone Age being real rock
\nvs. The Hives\/Vines\/White Stripes being real rock. It wasn’t as
\nvicious as a Beatles vs. Stones slugfest, but the smarmy conceit of
\nQOTSA fans reminded me of those of us who prefer King Crimson and
\nYes to such mindless fare as, say, Neil Diamond.<\/p>\n
So this release was supposed to save rock and roll, based on the
\nearly reviews, but the final product is more of a letdown. Sure,
\nQOTSA is a thinking man’s rock band, a cross between Blue Oyster
\nCult and the Foo Fighters with a Crimson mentality, and they do
\nrock, but
\nSongs For The Deaf<\/i> is treated as an inside joke, with only
\nthe two-person band understanding the meaning. As such, it’s hard
\nto feel connected, and the CD wears thin after more than one
\nspin.<\/p>\n
The whole concept is a night of music on the AM radio. Fake DJs
\nappear between songs to joke around, breaking up the songs and
\nmonotony, which one will notice quickly because for whatever
\nreason, the simulated “radio” sounds like the cheap Wal-Mart kind.
\nEverything here is flat and quiet, like the musicians put towels
\nover the speakers before recording. It’s an odd way to record and
\nit doesn’t work, especially with a band that knows how to rock.<\/p>\n
The songs themselves tend to get a bit old, as the duo (and
\nstudio musicians) rarely stray from mid-tempo power chords. The
\nlonger songs are just repetitive with false endings, and for a band
\nthat is obviously talented, there are few flourishes here to
\nseparate this from standard modern rock fare.<\/p>\n
This is not to say the band isn’t talented. “No One Knows” won a
\nGrammy for Best Rock Song, and it is pretty good (actually, when I
\nsaw the band live, they were playing it until some roadies dumped
\nping-pong balls on their heads right before the Chili Peppers went
\non. You had to be there). “Go With The Flow” is pretty catchy, and
\n“God Is In The Radio” has a marching-drum intro and some pretty
\ncool stop-start work during the chorus. The closing acoustic
\n“Mosquito Song” is good as well; there should have been more like
\nthis on the album.<\/p>\n
However, the worst moments of this disc are just interminable,
\nlike the 13 minutes that make up “Song For The Deaf” and “The Sky
\nIs Fallin’.” Stuff like “Another Love Song” and “Song For The Dead”
\nare mid-tempo, boring, tinny-sounding and a waste of time.<\/p>\n
There is some good material here, but it’s not good enough to
\nrecommend as a whole. At the time, the creators probably thought
\nthey had rock’s savior album on their hands, but now it seems like
\nan inside joke by a band who tried to prove they were better than
\neveryone else and failed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":26966,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6538],"rating":[11204],"class_list":["post-38278","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-queens-of-the-stone-age","rating-rating-c-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/38278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=38278"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=38278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}