DESERT SESSIONS

Vols 11 & 12 MATADOR 7/10

Californian desert collective reconvene, 16 years on. By Sharon O’connell

THE days when Queens Of The Stone Age fitted the ‘desertrock’ descriptor, like Kyuss before them, are long gone. Logically, then, that baton might have been picked up by Josh Homme’s sessions at Rancho De La Luna studio in Joshua Tree, through which a load of diverse talent has passed in the past 20 years – PJ Harvey, Mark Lanegan and Dean Ween included. But the notion of legacy has no place in this revolving-door jam; the idea is that invited players clear out their institutional cobwebs and cut loose, serving the music, rather than their egos or careers. As Homme recently stated: “All it’s doing, really, is asking a question. And that is: ‘Do you remember why you started playing?’ Because there’s nobody out here to care, except you and me.”

It seems he’d planned to revive his bunkhouse get-together back in 2014, but instead ended up working on Eagles Of Death Metal’s Zipper Down. Homme has explained that the optimum time is always December-january, “when everything slows and everyone takes a deep breath out. At the end of the year everyone has exhaled. So if I miss that window… I miss that window.” In fact, he’s missed that window 15 times – the last Desert Sessions release was Vols 9 & 10, in 2003. Still, he’s hardly been idle since then: production work for Arctic Monkeys, The Hives and Iggy Pop has figured, along with a stack of features on others’ records and four QOTSA albums, with the announcement of their eighth LP expected before the end of this year. But a post on Homme’s Instagram early in May included the not-so-cryptic tease, “I wonder if anyone’s been recording in the desert?” They had – over five days in December 2018.

For these two new volumes in the DS series (subtitled “Arrivederci Despair” and “Tightwads & Nitwits & Critics & Heels”, respectively), Homme has recruited a 10-strong mix of likely suspects – Billy Gibbons, Matt Sweeney and Jack White drummer Carla Azar among them – and more surprising guests (Jake Shears, Matt Berry), plus a couple of unknowns (newcomer Libby Grace Hackford, the mysterious Töôrnst Hülpft). The eight songs, which just breast the 30-minute mark, play less closely to type than previous DS recordings, with their reliance on meaty guitars in grubby, modified blues tones with ample effects and demonstrable swagger. Since improv adaptability and surrender to the group is a DS constant, there are no radical character transformations, so that “Noses In Roses, Forever” – with its disco-blues strut, fuzz-heavy triple-guitar interplay and Homme’s fine falsetto – sounds like a QOTSA workout is no great surprise. In fact, with a bit of toning it would fit just fine in that band’s repertoire. Ditto the opening “Move Together”, Gibbons’ homage to the chemistry that binds a couple together despite their differences. Here, a lasciviously hushed build-up with electronic texturing is punctuated by sudden, heavily burred guitar eruptions.

Homme’s recent claim that he’s “like a tour guide heading deep into the heart of bizarre” rather oversells the album’s oddness (it’s slightly eccentric, nothing more) although that might well describe the recording process. The set’s strength, though, lies in the very things that might otherwise render it slight: a good-time ambience, relaxed confidence and palpable, no-pressure approach.

Nothing represents the see-how-it-rolls attitude more than “Chic Tweetz”. Against a basic, glam-stomp backdrop, Töôrnst Hülpft – who, so the story goes, turned up to a session in Homme’s Pink Duck studio without anyone knowing who he was – delivers an absurdist, rhyming spiel with comic interjections from Matt Berry, who also plays organ. With its goofy lurch and couplets like, “I sent you this – hot fax!/ And you gave me de axe/i said I would wax all your cracks – what’s with that?”, it’s way more entertaining than it has any right to be.

In sharp contrast are Homme and Azar’s breezy instrumental “Far East For The Trees”, where cigar-box fiddle, dobro and synth summon the feel of a ’50s movie soundtrack, “Something You Can’t See” (lyrics and vocal by Jake Shears, music by Royal Blood’s Mike Kerr), whose dreamy, psychedelic soul-pop nods to Kevin Parker, and theatrical, prog-toned closer “Easier Said Than Done”, where Homme bemoans the high psychological cost of our endlessly judgemental culture, while remarking that “all of existence has always been free”.

To expect a shakedown on any Desert Sessions record is to misunderstand its purpose: it’s as much about process as end product, with commonality of spirit key. As the jokey acknowledgement in the sleeve notes says of the latest players, “Their goal was achieved with minimal effort, as they’re masters of musical expression”. Laid-back and loose maybe, but neither lazy nor lacklustre.