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Leave it up to Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme to find a way to do drugs and get paid for it. The latest installment in the Desert Sessions (a series that is, more or less, a multiple-day jam session drug-fest with Homme and his favorite musicians) contains just enough QOTSA flavor to tickle the bandwagoneers that Songs for the Deaf grabbed hold of, tinged with the perfect amount of rough edges and construction signs to assure the diehards that the beginning of the Palm Desert family's success does not signify the end of its musical experimentation.

Josh Freese, Dean Ween, Twiggy Ramirez, Troy van Leeuwen and PJ Harvey, among others, contribute their talents – and their stashes – to Desert Sessions 9/10, creating an album that sulks beautifully in murk and melancholy sadness. "I Wanna Make It Wit Chu" and the PJ-led tunes "Powdered Wig Machine" and "Crawl Home" all showcase those catchy, spacey hooks for which Homme is so well known. With a bit of sandpaper and a little polish, "In My Head… Or Something" could be a worthy addition to the next Queens album. Simpler works like "There Will Never Be A Better Time" – which features PJ going apeshit trippy over Chris Goss' guitar chuggings – help portray the spontaneity of the jam sessions.

The gloomy rainy day theme of the all-star collaboration is broken up with bits like the fast instrumental "Covered in Punks Blood," along with two plain ol' goofy pieces of filler – "Sheperds Pie" ("Sheperd's pie, sheperd's pie, I'm gonna get me some sheperd's pie") and "I'm Here For Your Daughter" ("I'm here for your daughter / please don't try and stop her / I would have to kill you / that would not be nice"). Not a bad collection of tunes for a few days of fucking around. - Erik Fong