On Thursday night, Queens Of The Stone Age, one of the great running rock bands, did musical-guest duty on Jimmy Fallon's Tonight Show, but they didn't exactly have new music to sell. Queens Of The Stone Age seem to be working on new music, and they debuted their song "Easy Street" at their tour opener last week. But they were on Fallon to flog Alive In The Catacombs, the very cool concert film and accompanying EP that they released earlier this year.
QOTSA recorded Alive In The Catacombs in the literal catacombs, the old cemetery tunnels under Paris. They played atmospheric acoustic versions of a bunch of their songs, and that version of the band is the one that's currently on tour. It's also the one that played The Tonight Show last night. I don't think it's possible to evoke the feeling of the catacombs in a TV studio where Jimmy Fallon stands waiting to hoot the second your song finishes, but QOTSA did their best.
On Fallon, Queens Of The Stone Age performed the two-song medley that they used to open Alive In The Catacombs: "Running Joke," from 2007's Era Vulgaris, and "Paper Machete," from 2023's In Times New Roman… Josh Homme started the performance backstage, transmitting surly cool all over the place, and he slowly made his way to the dimly lit, extremely red stage, where his bandmates and a string section waited for him. He sang while waving around one of those portable bulb lights, and he actually achieved much of the Lynchian atmosphere that he obviously wanted. The band kept everything at a low swirl with no electric guitars or drums, just acoustics and castanets. At least for a moment, Homme and his band managed to cast a spell. Watch it below.
Alive In The Catacombs is out now on Matador.
