It's been so long since the moon has gone

Continuing my trip back through the 2005 album charts.

27/03/05 : Lullabies To Paralyze - Queens Of The Stone Age

You can't argue with that as a cool album title, can you? (although I'm not so sure about the cover).  I quite like QOTSA for one or two tracks, but after that it all gets a bit samey for me, so I'm not sure I'm going to need a whole hour of this.

Well, there's maybe a bit more variety than I was expecting, but not loads.  However, taken a couple of tracks at a time, I think there's quite a lot to admire here, so I'm not going to be harsh about it - but there's no danger of me revisiting it.  Those who love this sort of thing will undoubtedly love it though.

We're at #4 with a new entry this week on the start of a nine week run - it feels like it maybe deserved slightly more than that, but its constant downward trajectory suggests it didn't pick up any new fans.  The rest of the top five were Tony Christie, Stereophonics, Basement Jaxx (another new entry) and 50 Cent with the next highest new entry being Beck (#15) with Guero, an album I've never even heard of.

Wikipedia tells us this is their fourth album, the follow up to Songs For The Deaf, with Josh Homme really being the only band member who survived from that album with Nick Oliveri having been fired, Dave Grohl going back to his day job and Mark Lanegan concentrating on his solo career.  It has some weird guest appearances though - Billy Gibbons (from ZZ Top) plays guitar on quite a few tracks, Shirley Manson and Brody Dalle provide backing vocals on one track, Jesse Hughes (from Eagles Of Death Metal) plays flute on one track and Jack Black provides "handclaps and stomps" on a couple of tracks!  The critics were nice enough about it but thought it not as good as Songs For The Deaf, so it was somewhat of a surprise that it actually did better than its predecessor commercially.

"Customers also listened to" Them Crooked Vultures, Eagles Of Death Metal, Kyuss and Royal Blood - not really my kind of thing although Royal Blood have been surprisingly bearable when I've met them.  And this is certainly bearable as well - I just don't feel the need for a whole album of it.

20/03/05 - A good "of its time" album
03/04/05 - Yeah, I liked this

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