Queens of the Stone Age Returns, and 8 More Songs We’re Talking About
New releases from Queens of the Stone Age, Snoh Aalegra, Everything but the Girl, Sampa the Great, and Diiv showcase a range of styles and lyrical themes.
Queens of the Stone Age have issued a new album titled “Perfecth,” described as deliberately bare‑bones and live‑sounding, as if recorded before the era of infinite digital overdubs. The closing song, “Run Away From the Mob,” warns against brainwashing and bloodthirsty groupthink. Parts of the track were recorded 20 years ago, featuring Dave Grohl on drums, and it opens with a spindly, low‑fi acoustic guitar. Even as it builds to a reassuring line – “I’m right there wherever you are” – the song sounds far from invincible.
Iranian‑Swedish singer‑songwriter Snoh Aalegra offers a track built for the dance floor at countless weddings to come. Over a beat that sits between Prince’s guitar‑scrubbing funk and 21st‑century Afrobeats, she declares unconditional, loyal affection with the line “I want this forevermore.”
Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt, together as Everything but the Girl since 1982, have set aside their longtime club‑friendly electronics for “Young and Dumb,” a restrained, pensive, unplugged bossa nova from their upcoming February album “Blue Reservoir.” Thorn’s wistful contralto reflects on maturity and mortality, asking “Where did the wildness go?” and admitting, “I’d give up all the wisdom to be young and dumb again.”
Rapper Sampa the Great, born in Zambia and raised in Botswana, claims a new genre with her album “Nu Zamrock,” rapping atop the guitar and horn riffs of Zamrock, Zambia’s early‑1970s answer to psychedelia. Her uncle George Kunda was a founder of the top Zamrock band Witch. In the track “Location,” she delivers rapid‑fire triplets about African music’s global reach and meager reward, noting “Don’t own all your art / Then it’s all just the same.”
Guitar‑driven band Diiv continues its catalog of distortion‑heavy songs with the new album “Zirp!” and an unexpected collaboration with hyperpop pioneer A.G. Cook, known for work with Charli XCX. Cook does not impose digital crispness; the opening track “The Fountain” emerges from a staticky haze with bent guitar notes and blurry cymbals, while the lyrics ambivalently consider “tear it up and start again” and warn “There’s poison in the fountain of youth.”
These eight songs illustrate a spectrum of artistic choices, from minimalist rock to genre‑blending rap, and suggest that even established acts are still experimenting with sound and message.
