It’s hard to fathom that it’s been more than 20 years since Queens of the Stone Age emerged from the rubble of the proto-dessert-rock band Kyuss. From its origins making ragged music at the arid crossroads of punk and metal, QotSA has undergone quite an evolution. Its sound has become polyglot, a heady brew of sludge, grunge, metal, punk-rock, prog-rock, power-pop, funk, disco, boogie, dessert blues, glam, fuzz, grind, robot-rock, velveteena, crank-lit, endocsco-pop, OK now I’m just making shit up.
Despite the influx of influences, the band keeps a foothold in the stoner rock that leader Josh Homme hatched in his hometown of Palm Dessert, California. QotSA established those bona fides early in its show at the Mahaffey Theater on Wednesday night by kicking off with “Keep Your Eyes Peeled,” built on a trudging Jurassic shuffle, a down-tuned doom riff and a Bowie-esque melody.
THAT'S MY HOMME-BOY
Review: Queens of the Stone Age bring roaring mayhem to Mahaffey Theater (2014)
From there, Homme and company delivered a solid career retrospective that ranged from the grimy churn of “Avon,” heard on the band’s self-titled 1998 debut (and played by request), to such “hits” as “I Sat By the Ocean,” “The Way You Used to Do” and “Feet Don’t Fail Me.” The set featured six songs from last year’s Mark Ronson-produced Villains album. For the perfect QotSA song, you gotta go back to 2002’s “No One Knows.” Its tightly coiled groove builds tension beneath a menacing hook; then the chorus cuts loose an ecstatic release of surging guitar wallop. The on-stage setting only intensified the tune’s fist-pumping effect.
Homme is by nature a cool customer, more Cary Grant than Johnny Rotten, and as such a QotSa set is not apt to deliver the kind of sweaty, blood-curdling catharsis that marks the best hard-rock concerts. Dressed in black and slinging hollow-body electric guitars, his ginger hair styled like a Tommy Hilfiger model’s, the 44-year-old shook and shimmied and slinked around the stage. At one point he whipped out a little black comb and spiffed up his ‘do. Homme’s thin, at times fragile, voice provides an effective contrast to the six-string onslaught, although it occasionally got smothered on Wednesday night.
The lighting, worth a mention, mixed stark white with a kind of hovering haze of shifting colors that called to mind an apocalyptic sandstorm. And kudos to the band for offering up what seems to be headed the way of the compact disc: a drum solo. Jon Theodore didn’t go all Ginger Baker and bang on for 15-minutes; rather he pounded together a concise string of thundering rock cliches and delivered them so ferociously that it had me rethinking my proposed ban on gratuitous drummer spotlights.
While I personally did not get transported or reach a fever zone during this sold-out Queens concert, I’m compelled to say that the crowd — ample but not capacity considering a row of empty seats next to me — was effusive in its support, on their feet the entire time, showering the band with riotous applause.
