Taking a more introspective tone, the band’s latest LP offers a toned down, introspective version of their modern hard-rock<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cI throw myself upon the tracks.\u201d John Homme sings at the jagged, forlorn beginning of the ninth Queens of the Stone Age<\/a> album. It\u2019s just him and his acoustic guitar, and to drive home those lyrics we hear the sound of an elevated train rushing by, as if we\u2019re sitting with him in his lonely apartment on the worst part of town, a down-on-his-luck dude truly starting over. Indeed, Homme has had his struggles, including a messy public divorce, a child custody battle, and a recent cancer-related surgery. On Perfecth, he tries to build something new inside his wreckage. It\u2019s his band\u2019s most subdued and introspective work; where Queens\u2019 last album, 2023\u2019s In Times New Roman\u2026<\/a>saw him strike out against the world while offering a nuanced, grown-up take on the kind of sleek hard-rock that made QOTSA rep, this album sounds like it\u2019s designed for brooding bedrooms not loud arenas.<\/p>\n \t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cPhantom Limb\u201d is like an acoustic X-ray of a heavy-rock tune, with Homme singing about trying to pilot friendless isolation. He breaks out his best decadent English-rocker warble for acoustic songs like \u201cFrom the Cliff\u201d and \u201cEasy Street,\u201d as he wonders about the weird ins and outs of trying to trust new relationships. The latter song comes with a lyric that analogizes his experience to being \u201cpunched in the face\u201d by bad luck, an unfortunate metaphor for someone who\u2019s been accused of domestic violence by his ex-wife, Brody Dalle of the Distillers.<\/p>\n \n\tThe stuff that works here manages to blast past personal malaise with music that rocks. \u201cSunday\u201d ties his best Bowie voice to a slithering Iggy Pop-style track as Homme sings about searching for solace in a cold world. \u201cI\u2019m a wreck, what did you expect,\u201d he admits. With its low-slung riff and stuttering stomping groove \u201cWhere the Goth Girls At\u201d breaks past its less-than-promising title to deliver gutter-glam thrills. \u201cInsignificant Other\u201d is a Seventies Stones stroll backing lyrics that pick through the smoldering embers of a past he can\u2019t rewrite. \u201cWe all make plans until life gets in the way and there\u2019s nothing left of us to hold onto,\u201d Homme sings, sounding genuinely depleted. He hasn\u2019t always come off as the most sympathetic figure during his myriad personal upheavals, but here the sense of honest reckoning feels earned. It\u2019s enough to make you hope he finds his way up off the mat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taking a more introspective tone, the band’s latest LP offers a toned down, introspective version of their modern…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":386743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[5006,9,24,63,122,124,123,2856],"class_list":["post-386742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-josh-homme","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-queens-of-the-stone-age"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/386743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}