What does Queens of the Stone Age sound like? Since Era Vulgaris, they’ve sounded like QOTSA, and before that, they sounded a lot like QOTSA. Era Vulgaris dropped in 2007, and then Them Crooked Vultures released their only record in 2009. Then QOTSA released …Like Clockwork in 2013 and Villains in 2017. I hear that difference between Era Vulgaris and Like Clockwork, that span of time where Homme released something groovier than the creepy vibe of Lullabies to Paralyze and the dirty vibe of Era Vulgaris.
QOTSA’s latest album, In Times New Roman…, came as a small surprise to me. I saw the singles dutifully released a month ahead, but I had a lot of other stuff going on the weekend of the official album release, and I didn’t get to visit the album until several days later. I felt uncertain during my first listen. The album sounded hipstery, kinda marshmallowy, but after a few more listens and some time to digest, I really liked it. I’ve had similar experiences with QOTSA albums since Era Vulgaris. In Times New Roman is groovy, not super heavy. It’s creepy, catchy and aggressive, big and sexy. I like it.
Sometimes I miss Nick Oliveri’s edge in songs like “Six Shooter” and “Tension Head” and the haunting Mark Lanigan tracks like “Hanging Tree” and “Burn the Witch” in the early 2000s QOTSA lineup, but after that, the band became more of what Homme had wanted in the first place: groovier, dancier, grittier, not as hard, less driving than early QOTSA. Homme said (somewhere, I ain’t gonna cite it) that they liked the sound of that name but thought “kings of the stone age” sounded too macho, and the “queens of the stone age” would have been hanging out and banging the kings’ girlfriends while they fought about sports. Can you hear that casual sexiness in these tracks?
QOTSA put together a helpful playlist of the Matador trilogy on Spotify, suggesting we’re supposed to hear these last three records in combination — whether sequential (as they have it) or as pastiche (when you turn on shuffle), I don’t know. In Times New Roman has more classic rock sounds, more 70s guitar effects. I like to think the line “I don’t know what time it was” in “Made to Parade” could be a reference to that one Zeppelin’s “Misty Mountain Hop”. Maybe not. Fight me about it. I love those lines because they stand out as one flash of clarity against the sarcasm and innuendo of the rest of the album: “I felt so young with a brand new page in the morning sun.” I think that’s one of the happiest lines I’ve heard in a QOTSA song, like connecting with villain in that moment when you discover that he’s human after all.
Back in 2013, I took my minimum wage money and bought Like Clockwork on compact disc. Still have it. It pulled me in right away with that heavy groove that kicks off “Keep Your Eyes Peeled” and the album as a whole. Listening to Villains in Nashville, that album grew on me. Era Vulgaris grew on me in high school. In Times New Roman has grown on me at this point in my life. Each song has gotten itself stuck in my head between listens, particularly “Made to Parade”, which might have already become my favorite song on the album. Each track gives me something. “Paper Machete” is that straightforward single a la QOTSA greats like “In My Head”. “Obscenery” drips the disdain that I love from the band. “Negative Space” has a sick drum groove featuring the big fat bass drum. The whole record sounds thick and saturated like honey.
The word “gothic” approached me after a few listens through the album. I heard lyrical kinship with someone like Peter Steele in the sorrowful, sensual sounds of “Sicily”, like the weirdness of “The Blood Is Love” and the general atmosphere of Lullabies to Paralyze. QOTSA doesn’t need the comical obsession with gore or kitschy horror like The Cannibalistic Corpse or Robert Zombie to unsettle the ear (something something the name “Eagles of Death Metal”). Homme doesn’t need to prove anything to anyone. “To be vulnerable is needed most of all” if you want to write something creepy that doesn’t seem artfully contrived. QOTSA’s theme seems gothic to me. “When there’s nothing I can do, I smile,” says the Carnavoyeur. That’s the way my own feelings of helplessness sometimes speak to me.
It’s a great record. It sticks. It gets in my head. It’s catchy. It’s got pieces of early QOTSA, pieces of appendages like EODM and Vultures and Post Pop and Desert Sessions. It has internal consistency with the other two albums in this apparent Matador triptych. QOTSA may never quite deliver what we expect, but they deliver more than what we deserve, and Homme would tell us to go listen to KRDL if we wanted music that sounds more like Songs for the Deaf again.
Because who does this record sound like if not QOTSA?
I Probably Don't Have Time 