Queens of the Stone Age have spent three decades making the crooked, strange and occasionally sleazy sound irresistible. Now Josh Homme and company are heading somewhere new again with ninth studio album \u2018Perfecth\u2019, arriving October 30 via Matador Records and Remote Control Records.<\/p>\n
The announcement comes with \u2018Insignificant Other\u2019, the second taste of the album following \u2018Easy Street\u2019, featuring Nikki Lane. Recorded in only two takes, the new track captures Queens playing loose rather than chasing studio perfection, leaving space for the five members to react to each other as the song unfolds.<\/p>\n
At its heart is distance and the disorientation that follows when somebody who once occupied an enormous part of your life suddenly disappears. It is an idea that feeds directly into the wider concerns of \u2018Perfecth\u2019, an album that circles different forms of love and what remains after those relationships change, fracture or disappear.<\/p>\n
Homme produced \u2018Perfecth\u2019 alongside bassist Michael Shuman, with Troy Van Leeuwen, Dean Fertita and Jon Theodore completing the current Queens lineup. Sessions took place across multiple locations including New Orleans and Los Angeles, producing nine songs that deliberately resist settling into a single mood.<\/p>\n
The Japanese art of kintsugi provides one of the album\u2019s central ideas. Rather than disguisging the cracks in broken pottery, kintsugi repairs them with gold and makes the damage part of the object\u2019s history. Queens apply something similar to \u2018Perfecth\u2019, taking the accumulated fractures of life, relationships and the band itself and building them into the record rather than attempting to hide them.<\/p>\n
Even the title refuses perfection. Homme has deliberately broken the word itself, turning \u2018perfect\u2019 into \u2018Perfecth\u2019 and giving a nonexistent state its own slightly mangled spelling. It fits a band that has rarely sounded particularly interested in clean edges.<\/p>\n
\u2018Perfecth\u2019 is the follow-up to 2023\u2019s \u2018In Times New Roman\u2026\u2019 and arrives during another particularly active period for Homme. Alongside the new Queens material, he has collaborated with Shania Twain on \u2018Faded Blue Jeans\u2019 and contributed guest vocals to Mastodon\u2019s \u2018Snakes for Dinner\u2019.<\/p>\n