At first glance, the world Queens of the Stone Age have created on their new album feels curiously self-contained. After working with Mark Ronson on 2017’s Villains, easily the loosest and most danceable the band has ever sounded while maintaining a dark edge, they produced its follow-up on their own, with no high-profile guests to be found across its 10 tracks. It’s an approach not too unlike that taken by the Foo Fighters on But Here We Are, their 11th album released earlier this month: having leaned into their funk and disco influences on Medicine at Midnight and an EP of Bee Gees covers, they were forced to go back to basics on an earnest, down-to-earth record fearlessly bearing the scars of grief.
In Times New Roman… is not the same album. It’s no secret it was made during a time of personal turmoil for bandleader Josh Homme, including the loss of collaborators and friends like Foo Fighters’ Taylor Hawkins and Mark Lanegan, the fallout from his divorce from Brody Dalle, and his cancer diagnosis, which was revealed just days ahead of the album’s release. But as they dig into their roots, fully aware there’s no such thing as “going back,” it should come as no surprise that the songs are knottier and gnarlier in their intensity. Whether that’s an antidote to chaos or just part of their brand, it’s a thrill that makes them one of the most unusually, rather than just reliably, consistent bands in rock.
You just wish they’d allow themselves to get a little weirder, not least because the bulk of the record delivers every other key element of a classic QOTSA song: the groove, the hooks, the menace. The first sign that the band is playing it rather safe comes with the opener ‘Obscenery’, which threatens to disintegrate halfway through before sticking right back to the formula. Even with awkward lines like “Empty hole where the empathy used to be/ In the obscenery is where you’re happy to be,” the song does a good job of introducing the almost apocalyptic disdain and depression that pervades the rest of the record. It’s when Homme’s lyricism is more direct than inventive that the sentiment cuts through, though: “I am weightless, yet heaviness defines/ Between what home was and the yellow moon,” he sings on ‘Negative Space’ as the band drifts into that paradox of a sensation; in that moment, they sound like the only group of people capable of making sense of it. There’s catharsis in the constant malaise, but they seem less concerned with capturing it than finding different ways to grind, stomp, squelch, and occasionally shine through the mud.
It’s not until the record’s second half that songs build into something bolder and more substantial. They’re more equipped to sell the philosophy, as laid out in ‘Obscenery’, of giving in when faced with nothingness. “When there’s nothing I can do/ I smile,” Homme declares on ‘Carnavoyer’, and you can see it wryly forming on his face, a grim resignation that actually sounds freeing. Like every moment here that makes space for strings, ‘Sicily’ has a hypnotic pull to it, but it actually commits, and the orchestral swell ends up mirroring Homme’s foreboding outro: “Tangled and tied, now and forever.” And then there’s ‘Emotion Sickness’, the song that most effectively balances swagger and melody. Still, even the album’s most captivating choruses are hardly as memorable as the ones they cooked up ten years ago on …Like Clockwork, though you get the sense they might creep up on you over time.
If this is Queens of the Stone staying clear of anything that could be called triumphant, anthemic, or explosive – all descriptors But Here We Are immediately earned – it’s not without reason. Even the 9-minute closing track, ‘Straight Jacket Fitting’, is far from the stereotypical epic finale, slowly churning and gaining muscle until it transforms into an acoustic manifestation of the ellipsis in the album’s title. “The world, yeah, she don’t need saving,” Homme sings, “‘cept from you and me and our misbehaving.” He’s alone, and full of doubt, and goddamn sick of this place – and then, on the absolute brink of collapse, he belts out, “Bring on the healing.” People might not call In Times New Roman… a triumph, but they will be quick to describe it as a personal exorcism. Yet that sounds like the first time that prospect is even on the table, and haven’t we all just been waiting in line.
