After releasing four albums, QOTSA’s greatest album to me is obviously their third album, Songs for the Deaf. With a combination of mellow relaxing tunes (e.g.-Hangin’ Tree), some hard rock songs (e.g.-You Think I Ain’t Worth A Dollar, but I Feel Like a Millionaire) and a couple of eerie sounding songs (e.g.-Song for the Deaf). Most of the songs on this album could have easily been singles, many songs featuring something different that I find enjoyable.
This band has certainly seen some line up changes, but at the time this album was recorded was Josh Homme playing guitar and doing some awesome vocals, Dave Grohl beating down on the drums, Nick Oliveri pulling on the strings of the bass, and Mark Lanegan playing some sweet chords on the guitar. There is a total of thirteen songs on the album along with a supposedly hidden track. It’s not really hidden though because it says “Hidden Track-Mosquito Song” on the back of the cd where the rest of the track list is.
The album starts off with the sound of a car engine and beeping from the inside of the car and in comes a radio station that states “we play the songs that sound more like everyone else than anyone else”. Radio DJ Kip Casper comes in and says “I need a saga, what’s the saga? It’s Songs for the Deaf”. The overall musicianship for the album is quite impressive in every single department, which is a rare case for most bands or albums. Joshua Homme’s singing is one of the best things about this band, with his unique and somewhat eerie voice. His best vocal performances on this album are most likely the songs
First It Giveth,
Gonna Leave You, and
No One Knows. The guitar playing from Josh and Mark is without a doubt, the premier part of this album. The leads that are played throughout many songs are fantastic and can not be praised enough. Every song there is something that the guitars have to offer that makes that one song unique. However, sometimes the chords that are played tend to become somewhat boring and repetitive. The bass from Nick has it’s fair share of moments as well with a cool moving bass line throughout he song
No One Knows, along with many other songs that depend on the bass as a central part. Dave Grohl’s work on the album might at times seem to only be average, but there are plenty of moments where he has his moments to shine, obviously on songs such as
Song For The Dead, which is also the masterpiece song on the album with fantastic musicianship throughout and then there is also the song
Hangin’ Tree where Dave does a great job as well. The single
Go With The Flow has an interesting beat to it, although not overly complicated. Some of the drum work on the album can seem slightly tedious at times however. A good example of just average drumming would most likely be actually a favorite of mine,
You Think I Ain’t Worth A Dollar, But I Feel Like A Millionaire. Some songs will start to sound the same, which is what the only weak part of the entire album is. Not all songs are written around the same structure though and are completely different from each other, giving the record some slight diversity.
This album is a near perfect record to me and despite the fact that some people will be annoyed by the singing voice of Joshua Homme and the slight repetitiveness; this record will definitely have something for any fan rock to enjoy. I could only narrow my favorite songs on the album to six and those are-
Millionaire, [i]No One Knows[i],
First It Giveth,
Song For The Dead,
Hangin’ Tree, and
God Is In The Radio. To me there are no real weak songs, but some times the riffs will start to sound the same and will cause some boredom. I give this a rating of superb (4.5 out of 5). I hope you all enjoyed this review and found it to be well written. Thank you for your time.
