A new year dawns, and with it a new single from the enigmatic beast that is QOTSA minus Nick Oliveri. Burn The Witch is a fuzzy, stomping blues number both assured and groovy yet, like much of the Lullabies to Paralyze album, it's missing something to make it interesting enough to maintain QOTSA's relevance into the second half of this decade.

That doesn't mean the great ginger one hasn't tried - he's even roped in Billy Gibbons, aka the Reverend Willie G. from ZZ Top, to provide sporadic bursts of classy Texas lead guitar, and Mark Lanegan's doing his usual bored "can I go home now?" drawl in the background too. Listening to the song you can pretend that the Queens are still on pretty good form - until a live take on No One Knows kicks in and blasts it out of the water.

There's three live tracks on the single, plus a pretty cool UNKLE remix that's both seemingly obligatory but also unnecessary - a paradox with a monster in it perhaps? The live tracks are what make this single worthwhile, but there's an anomaly there too - they render the new song irrelevant by reminding us just how much better this band used to be. There's a spark missing here, and it's hard to believe that the monster in the paradox is anyone other than the sorely missed Mr. Oliveri. Maybe it's about time Josh Homme stopped burning witches and started getting his old friends back - before his audience get so paralyzed that they never wake up again.

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Mercury Prize 2009 nominees