Afternoon Baseball

Queens of the Stone Age came out with their new album, Lullabies to Paralyze, last week. Not only are they minus Dave Grohl on drums (which is not such a huge loss given that their classic Rated R had journeymen drummers), but original bassist Nick Olivieri (sp?) was kicked out for being too much of a crazy partier, apparently.
So it's Josh Homme and a whole new lineup, which while the new lineup is nothing spectactular, it does force Homme to step up his guitar even more. Which he generally does. The album is a solid recording, as usual. The drumming doesn't dictate the tone as much this time, but that's ok: it's a lot more like Rated R in that sense. The lead single "Little Sister" is quirky but a great listen, and "Burn The Witch" gives off that similar feeling.
QOTSA has always been about loose, sludgy guitars with high-pitched guitar lines over that -- grooving music that's very tight at the same time, and likes to find the unexpected -- with a few variations on that theme. Nothing's different here, other than less emphasis on bass lines; "Medication" pulls off the low lightning quick-riff with vocals and soloing underneath in 1:54, whereas it took "Go With The Flow" and "Another Love Song" over 3 minutes to do the same on the last album.
"Everybody Knows That You Are Insane" starts off as a slow burner, almost like a late-Megadeth ballad without the metal edge (EDIT: actually, the first 10 seconds remind me of the opening to Rooney's "Find Myself."). A little over a minute into it, though, it drops into QOTSA thrash-mode and never really leaves it -- but never sacrificing melody or classic rock riffing.

It's a great album -- not because it's so unique or mindblowing -- but mostly because it's consistently good and delivers exactly what rock promises. Dependability is a hard thing to find in a band today.