DESERT SESSIONS Schallplatten & CDs

Review: If you're unfamiliar with what the Desert Sessions are, or were, then a little back story probably won't go amiss. It's 1997 and Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age) debunks to the remote desert enclave of Joshua Tree, California. He takes a handful of friends with him, and this being music that handful of friends are all suitably talented and - in many cases - pretty renowned. The results have been enshrined in the pantheons of music folklore, recorded and gradually released in sequential volumes. Here we have "Vol. 11 & 12" then, which features a host of notable characters. From Scissor Sisters' Jake Shears to ZZ Top man Billy Gibbons and Warpaint's Stella Mozgawa. Spanning the gamut from the cartoonish nod to Tom Tom Club or B52s ("Chic Tweetz") to the head-nodding, scuzzy rock 'n' roll goodness of "Noses In Roses, Forever", it's exploratory, beguiling and very much worthy of your time.