LIVE REVIEWS
“We been together so long you’d think we’d get sick of fucking each other,” Josh Homme smiles, “but that just ain’t the way.”
The ‘we’ in question, it seems, is the fandom that’s stayed with Queens of the Stone Age for 27 years and to whom he pays repeated tribute during this contradictory arena show. In some ways, this is the Homme of old, shorn of the grey goatee he donned around the release of brilliantly brutal new album ‘In Times New Roman’ and throwing moves – one leg cocked, his arms pointed campily to the sky – that remind you they used to call him ‘the ginger Elvis’.
Yet that album capped off a period rocked by what he euphemistically described to NME as the “extreme ups and downs of life”, and he exudes a curious uncertainty tonight. At one point, he admits he’s “fucking nervous”, which is some distance from the barking ringmaster persona that defined a Glastonbury 2023 performance so incendiary that footage of its seething circle pit went viral. There, he demanded the crowd “fuck shit up together”. Here, he ruminates on the difficulty of love (“I’m terrible at it”) and precedes one gooey monologue with the confession: “When I get scared or unsure, I talk too much.”
Musically, of course, he’s on firmer ground: there’s no denying that the five-piece are one of the greatest rock bands on the planet. He cackles dirtily before scything through new track ‘Carnavoyeur’, pounds out a ‘No One Knows’ so massive the audience bellows its riff as though it’s a football chant and decorates ‘Straight Jacket Fitting’, another newbie, with a fresh pyschobilly jangle. The 50-year-old even manages to maintain his word-perfect delivery of the latter when he surfs the front few rows.
It’s this well-honed crowd-pleasing, perhaps, that earns QOTSA the right to extended jam band makeovers, which are by turns immersive (a swampy ‘Better Living Through the Chemistry’) and politely received. Has anyone gone to a gig, ever, and thought, “I hope they do a drum solo in the encore”?
Still, the unifying ‘Make It Wit You’ and breakneck closer ‘Song for the Dead’ easily redress the set’s balance and it seems a performer of Homme’s charisma can’t help but entertain. “It’s only because of you that we’re here tonight,” the frontman gushes, before catching himself. “If you think that’s cheesy,” he adds, harnessing that ringmaster energy once more, “go fuck yourself.”
‘Regular John’
‘No One Knows’
‘Smooth Sailing’
‘My God Is the Sun’
‘Emotion Sickness’
‘If I Had a Tail’
‘Carnavoyeur’
‘The Way You Used to Do’
‘Better Living Through Chemistry’
‘The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret’
‘Paper Machete’
‘Domesticated Animals’
‘I Sat by the Ocean’
‘Straight Jacket Fitting’
‘Make It Wit Chu’
‘Little Sister’
‘God Is in the Radio’
‘Go With the Flow’
‘A Song for the Dead’
Kacey Musgraves has cast a spell across London’s Roundhouse. Dry ice shrouds the Texan artist and her 8-piece band in a hazy mist, the lighting dramatic – at times it evokes the break of dawn, others a thunderous rainstorm. And at the eye of this hurricane is Musgraves, her luminous vocals shining as brightly as the disco ball that’s illuminated during a rousing rendition of ‘Anime Eyes’. With the audience — who obey requests to be in the moment and not just view the gig through a lens — enraptured, the ethereal magic of the live show threads throughout.
Tonight’s gig is part of the ‘Deeper Well World Tour’, the shows accompanying Musgraves’ sixth studio album released earlier this year. It’s a record that saw her “navigating new beginnings”, as she said about its titular track: “Sometimes you reach a crossroads. Winds change direction. What you once felt drawn to doesn’t hold the same allure. You get blown off course but eventually find your footing and forage for new inspiration, new insight and deeper love somewhere else”. Or, as she more succinctly reflects in its chorus: “And I’ve got to take care of myself/I found a deeper well”.
This live setting, with the lush arrangements delivered by Musgraves’ double-denim clad band, is where the songs shine, the resilience and complex emotions they convey shining through. The power of opener ‘Cardinal’ ricochets through the venue accompanied by fleshed out instrumentals, while the lilting ‘The Architect’’s quietly questioning lyrics resonate in their subtle accompaniment.
Tracks that faded into the background on ‘Deeper Well’ at times work better here, too. ‘Jade Green’ is taken from a subdued slow burn into a thundering storm, Musgraves swathed in lights of the titular colour, strobes evoking lightning and crashes of percussion closing out the song, before the chaos subsides into a musical ‘Rainbow’. ‘Lonely Millionaire’, meanwhile, is elevated in this setting, the slinky track coming with mass sing-a-longs.
Yet for all the mysticism and magic when the music is playing, in-between songs Musgraves charms in a very different way. Her breezy wit juxtaposed with gut-wrenching music reminiscent of fellow on-stage entertainers Adele or Lewis Capaldi. As the band gear up for a quieter point in the set and huddle in closer at the front of the stage, Musgraves delights the audience with her tight-5 about the food poisoning and stomach upset she started the tour with, which soon spread around her touring party like wildfire. How did we get onto this story? An audience heckle that sounded a bit like a Spice Girl prompting Musgraves to reveal “I met Sporty the other day and almost shat myself! Speaking of…”
That’s not to say this humour isn’t also evident in Musgraves music — the excellent couplet “If you save yourself for marriage, you’re a bore/You don’t save yourself for marriage, you’re a hor-rible person” is sung with gusto by the crowd, in a stripped back rendition of ‘Follow Your Arrow’ (a cut from Musgraves’ debut studio record ‘Same Trailer Different Park’). And there’s rousing renditions of the jubilant kiss-off ‘High Horse’, and the eye-roll at an insecure ex on ‘Breadwinner’.
As she closes with a cover of Bob Marley & The Wailers’ ‘Three Little Birds’ and a short snippet of ‘Easier Said’, Musgraves tells the audience: “I hope your well has been deepened”. With the spell-binding communal magic of being in the moment and Musgraves’ powerhouse performance, we don’t doubt they have.
Kacey Musgraves played:
‘Cardinal’
‘Moving Out’
‘Deeper Well’
‘Sway’
‘Too Good to Be True’
‘Butterflies’
‘Happy & Sad’
‘Lonely Weekend’
‘Lonely Millionaire’
‘Follow Your Arrow’
‘The Architect’
‘Nothing to Be Scared Of’
‘Heaven Is’
‘Jade Green’
‘Rainbow’
‘Golden Hour’
‘Anime Eyes’
‘Don’t Do Me Good’
‘Justified’
‘Breadwinner’
‘High Horse’
‘Slow Burn’
‘Three Little Birds’ (Bob Marley & The Wailers cover)
‘Easier Said’
