For many of us who have a faint aversion to heavy rock, Queens of the Stone Age have long occupied a strange loophole. On paper, they ought to repel: the bulldozing riffs, the desert-rock machismo, the leather-jacketed sneer. And yet the songs slip past the defences. Beneath the fuzz and menace, Josh Homme has always had the instincts of a classic pop craftsman making MOR in disguise – decisive chord changes, gleaming hooks, tight structures, middle-eight pay-offs – dragged through a heavy-rock filter and left out in the sun to warp.
It’s true of their biggest songs. “No One Knows” has the melodic snap of vintage radio rock; “Go with the Flow” turns motoric velocity into power-pop; “Make It Wit Chu”, for all its leer, is essentially a soft-rock seduction ballad.

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