Queens Of The Stone Age - Songs For The Deaf

You Think I Ain't Worth A Dollar But I Feel Like A Millionaire - 4
No One Knows - 4
First It Giveth - 3
A Song For The Dead - 3
The Sky Is Fallin' - 3
Six Shooter - 3
Hangin' Tree - 3
Go With The Flow - 3
Gonna Leave You - 3
Do It Again - 3
God Is On The Radio - 3
Another Love Song - 3
Song For The Deaf - 4
Mosquito Song - 4
Total - 46 stars / 14 tracks = 3.29 stars, normalized to 3.3 stars

Songs For The Deaf's biggest shortcoming is in its very bold claim of what it is. Throughout the album, it satirizes and mocks mainstream and even slightly off-the-beaten-path conventional radio channels, raging against the absurdity of repetitive, clone-type music-making. After the first two tracks, you're totally on board with them, if not a little skeptical because of how accessible the music is. Then, for most of the rest of the record, it goes downhill. Uninteresting, but competently performed songs take up the next ten tracks, in various hardnesses of stoner rock. It's not until the penultimate "Song For The Deaf" and the unique and interesting finale, "Mosquito Song," that you remember that you were at one quite point enjoying yourself.

It's one thing to make fun of the radio for only playing generic inoffensive cardboard pop, but in your protest, you need to make sure that you're presenting something challenging enough to argue an alternative. "Mosquito Song" aside, Songs For The Deaf has its best songs when they sound like singles.