3. Songs For The Deaf (2002)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVV_3Z1mp_c Songs For The Deaf is so huge, its hued in something of a legendary status. Its the most ubiquitous record in the Stone Age annals, backed by three of the groups most successful singles to date, and in terms of size and scope its their most ambitious undertaking. In the bluntest terms, Songs For The Deaf is a goliath of a record; a twenty-first century riposte to the hard-rock stalwarts of decades past. In 2002, the Queens were a twenty-first century rock-and-roll gang, and their third album represents everything ecstatic about such an ethos. Songs For The Deaf encapsulates the sound of a tight-knit assembly of musicians in perfect telepathy, producing the kind of crunching, muscular rock-and-roll which is so compulsively listenable that it begs for (and rewards) repetitious consumption. Grohl and Homme trade their career-honed talents like veterans of the game, Oliveris unpredictable volatility adds both excitement and tension and Lanegans gravelly persona is a perfect narrator for the long, ominous drives through A Song for the Dead and God is in the Radio. Another of the albums primary signatures is its deployment of fake radio excerpts which stitch the albums disparate components together in a surprisingly deft fashion. Between numerous songs, listeners are treated to parodic snippets of radio chatter, from K-L-O-N (Los Angeles) to Dave Catching on W-A-N-T, and the result is an experience made to mimic a hefty drive across southern California. These skits (which feature a number of DJs and various associates of the band) have been
described by Oliveri as jibes aimed at commercial radio stations, and consequently, arguments have been made that Songs For The Deaf is a satire album. How far one chooses to define it as such a thing is subjective, but its fair play to posit that QotSA have their cake and eat it in this regard: the songs are not only cutting indictments of commercial radio, but also are staggeringly great rock songs in their own right. Theres not a single cut on here which could authentically be described as weak, even though there are one or two which dip slightly from the towering heights scaled elsewhere. But this is barely a quibble, and besides, on an album which succeeds so well at maintaining a sense of breathless fun, theres not a hair out of place. Songs For The Deaf is an incredibly entertaining album; one bursting with personality and varied without being too scattershot. And you dont get many albums which promise all this - and more - to the pound.
Highlight: God is in the Radio God is in the Radio might not be as bruising as some of its peers, but although its roar never fully bursts forth, the way it prowls and struts is as hypnotically sexy as anything else QotSA have ever laid down. Mark Lanegan leads from the front over a stomping, crunching riff, culminating in that visceral refrain (you come back another day / and do no wrong), and topped with not one, but two of Hommes most staggering guitar solos to date.