Skip to content
Premieres

Watch Queens of the Stone Age’s Entire Blistering Lollapalooza Set

Queens of the Stone Age, kings of the Bud Light Stage

On Friday night (August 2) California desert-rock goons Queens of the Stone Age hit Lollapalooza — which we loved — in the wake of their new number one album Like Clockwork… Though Josh Homme didn’t perform his infamous cover of Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines,” his own album’s lead single “My God is the Sun” was a worthy highlight, and he was as acerbic on-stage as ever. Of course, if you read SPIN’s recent extensive interview with the band mastermind, that won’t come as a surprise. Below is our own Christopher R. Weingarten’s dispatch from that set, which is streaming in-full above.

Queens of the Stone Age are not much for banter — frontman Josh Homme would deadpan stuff like “We came to get loose, man” and “I kind of like the clouds, you know?” They’re not much on stage moves either — sure, they dig into their instruments and sweat like crazy, but there’s not a whole lot of motion for hard rock’s coolest cucumbers. So, QOTSA’s set was all about that sound, a tight, monolithic, wall of noise wherein everyone’s slamming out the same rhythm.

To wit, people actually chanted the riff to “No One Knows” back at them like it was lyrics: “Doo dat doo doo doo / Dat doo doo doo.” Not that their 75-minte throwdown wasn’t without its variety: The broken waltz of “I Think I Lost My Headache” grew noisy and exploratory, Homme sat down on a stool to play keys for 2013’s actual-power-ballad “The Vampyre of time And Memory,” and “Song for the Dead” got some pretty unique guitar wolf whistles and Morello-style crossfades in the empty spaces.