Recorded 2010.

Available on the album, ‘I’m New Here’: Amazon

Just four things I want to to say about this track:

1. There is no point playing this track unless you play it LOUD.

Very loud. From the very start. Is the only way to experience what this track is all about. You may have seen that advice before – printed on various album sleeves by various ’heavy’ bands. And you will have dismissed it as the posturing it usually is. That would be a mistake here.

2. This track is proof that Metal can be cool.

And radical and surprising. It’s just that Metal bands - despite their rebellious ‘front’ – are usually so conservative in their attitudes and in their servitude to what has gone before that the fact that Metal can be cool and radical and surprising is nearly always a surprise in itself when it happens.    

3. Drummers can make the difference.

It may not be the most glamorous job in a band and 9 times out of 10 changing the drummer for another would hardly be noticed unless you were very very observant. But occasionally you come across a drummer that can turn good songs into something far more sublime.

The drums on this track (and the album it comes from) are played by ex Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl. Grohl only guested for the recording of the album and then left. Which means if you’ve seen QOTSA live, any tracks you’ve heard from this album were played with other drummers. They sound great of course and if you hadn’t heard the Grohl versions, you would be hard pushed to think how they could be played better.

But go back to the Grohl versions and you realise that he is so milisecond-perfect in his timing and in his feel – sometimes finding time and space inside the songs where you would never have guessed it existed, sometimes pushing a beat foward just a milisecond or chopping it off just a milisecond early to focus absolutely all of the power of the beat into exactly the same place at exactly the same time - that any other attempt to drum these tracks sounds…well…blurred really. 

Dave Grohl, like many drummers must do, seems to have got frustrated sitting at the back, out of the limelight. Unlike most drummers though he is a very talented writer, singer and guitarist too. So in his band, the Foo Fighters, he stands out front singing and guitaring. And he does this really well. But not as brilliantly and not as uniquely as he can transform a song – and bend and shape time itself - from behind a drum kit.

4. The album this track comes from - ‘Songs For The Deaf’ - is the most consistently brilliant Metal album since the album Led Zepellin’s ‘Physical Graffiti’ would have been if all the lighter tracks had been held back for a later release and just the heavier ones put out on a single vinyl version. Unless, of course, you know of another.

Released 2002.

‘You Think’ is the first track on the absolutely essential album ‘Songs For The Deaf’. However the version on the album is introduced by a slightly annoying radio sequence that is meant to replicate listening to the songs while driving across California. Buy the album of course but also get the clean, radio shananigans-free version of ‘You Think’ posted here on the soundtrack to the film ‘XXX’: Amazon

Released 1982.

Available on the album ‘New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84)’ which is best bought as part of the very wonderful and just released 5 cd box set, ‘X5′: Amazon