Desert wizards Queens of The Stone Age have put a little extra sauce into the video for “Smooth Sailing,” a clip that defies the stylistic leans of the band’s previous visual offerings and gets mighty dark with a quickness.
Watch below as frontman Joshua Homme takes the town (and joyrides in a stolen car) with some Asian businessmen, who push the limits of fun into the murderous zone after running lines and giving guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen a really bad day at the bar. Then shit gets downright scary, as the rampagingly drunken crew comes in contact with… demons? God? Your call. But stick around for the sobering morning-after conclusion, if you know what’s good for you.
Top 10 QOTSA Songs of All Time
The song itself is one of QOTSA’s finest compositions. Flaunting “bruises and hickies, stitches and scars” in a positively outrageous funk strut over a pulsing percussive riff, Homme’s mojo juice is dripping thickly through both vocal and a thick, mean guitar lead on the track. A haunting funhouse-clown vocal creeps into lines like “Fear is the hand that pulls your strings,” as Grohl sets a mid-tempo pace in the broken-robot stagger. It’s neck-and-neck with “Fairweather Friends” for our favorite track on …Like Clockwork, Crave’s selection for Album of The Year in 2013.
We’ll be catching QOTSA this weekend out in the desert at Coachella. Join us, won’t you?
