Few bands can claim to have had such an impact in the last few years as Queens Of The Stone Age. Arriving on the scene at a time when dance music was still ruling the roost and metal meant baggy shorts, bad rapping and faux teenage angst, their straight up heavy riffing, allied to a pop sensibility and narcotic intake, opened the floodgates for a legion of real rock bands to crash through and achieve both critical and commercial success.

Now with two multi-platinum selling albums under his belt, Queens' front man Josh Homme has once again retreated to his desert ranch with a selection of friends and associates, this time including P J Harvey, to get loaded and crank out volumes 9 and 10 of his infamous Desert Sessions.Away from the commercial spotlight that is so sharply focussed on the Queens, the Desert Sessions allow Josh and his cohorts to spin off on tangents, experiment and generally mess around. It's a testament to the talent involved that, despite gratuitous self-indulgence, the whole thing remains eminently listenable.

It's not all 15-minute Mogadon heavy stoner rock though. Time and time again the pop nous that put the Queens in a league above their competitors shines through. On tracks such as I Wanna Make It With Chu, Josh's killer instinct for the perfect pop hook lifts the whole thing above a glorified jam session.

But it's when the assembled cast really free themselves from the commercial anchor that things get interesting. When Polly Harvey's incomparable voice soars above crashing drums and incendiary riffs, or when everything is stripped away and we are left with just vocals and guitar recorded in one take, we have some of the most direct, raw, bluesy, primal rock that will come bursting through your speakers this year.

Switching on a moment's notice from the playful and light-hearted to the obscure and heavy, there are enough accessible moments not to frighten off any of the Queens' more casual fans, whilst those who have followed the band since their decidedly non-chart friendly days as Kyuss will appreciate the more wilful elements, the thunderous riffs, psychedelic air and happy experimentation.

What you have hear is a group of talented, successful musicians playing for the hell of it and enjoying every minute . As the man himself has said, "I think bands want to play together, and it's primarily for that. I think it's cool that it comes out and people review it and that's good, but the main reason is, 'Do you remember why you started playing?'" The Desert Sessions are a valuable reminder of what this whole music business should really be about.

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Mercury Prize 2009 nominees