Queens of the Stone Age

Queens of the Stone Age fans sure waited a long time for this record. And while …Like Clockwork is certainly worth the wait, I doubt it's the album they were expecting. Opener "Keep Your Eyes Peeled" certainly feels like the beginning of a Queens effort, but the following tracks never quite kick it up to high gear the way you'd expect. Queens thrive at writing anxiety-fuelled rockers whose start-stop rhythms create the sense that things could fall apart at any moment (see: "Feel Good Hit of the Summer," "Turning the Screw," "No One Knows"). But those sorts of songs are largely absent here; it's not that the individual pieces of the puzzle are missing, they're just evenly distributed throughout Queens' most laidback record to date. The band haven't gone soft, rather they've found a comfortable groove that finally lives up to the stoner rock tag singer/guitarist Josh Homme's been trying to shake since his Kyuss days. The band's long-running drummer, Joey Castillo, left during recording sessions, making room for Dave Grohl to once again step in behind the kit. With Mark Lanegan and even former bass player Nick Oliveri contributing as well, there's been much talk of a return to the Songs for the Deaf-era line-up and, some fans hoped, sound. That's not the case, but …Like Clockwork is definitely their best offering since that paranoid classic.