Album Review: Queens Of The Stone Age - Perfecth

For all his artistic ambitions, his stylistic excursions and his increasingly conspicuous attempts to escape the confines of heavy rock, Josh Homme has never been entirely convincing as a David Bowie-type figure. Queens of the Stone Age may have ventured far beyond their stoner-rock origins, but their greatest strength has always rested on considerably less fashionable foundations: Homme's formidable instincts as a heavy rock guitarist. That is not to deny the sophistication of his music: on the contrary, his unconventional harmonies, crooked grooves and eccentric melodic sensibility have always made Queens of the Stone Age a far more adventurous proposition than the stoner-rock label might suggest. But that inventiveness was most compelling when rooted in the physical force of the music, rather than pursued as a means of escaping it. Collaborating with Iggy Pop, cultivating an art-rock sensibility or reimagining his repertoire in the prestigious surroundings of an acoustic concert hall may confer a certain cultural distinction, along with the commercial rewards of cultivated alternative-rock credibility, but none of it has been quite as persuasive as the sound of Homme plugging in his guitar and doing what he does best.

Perfecth wisely appears to scale back some of these pretensions, although it makes no attempt to restore the Queens of the Stone Age of old. Less overtly psychedelic than some of its predecessors, the album favours relatively concise compositions, more direct melodies and arrangements that seldom resort to the band's customary displays of instrumental muscle. It is a remarkably restrained record, and one that reveals just how accomplished a singer Homme has become. His voice, once employed as much for its ironic inflections and studied nonchalance as for its melodic qualities, has acquired a new suppleness and emotional authority. He sounds more assured than ever, and increasingly willing to dispense with the protective layer of affectation that once accompanied his excursions into the upper register.

This is immediately apparent on "It's Only Love", a delicate composition built around jangling guitars and emotive strings, closer in spirit to Wilco than to anything associated with the band's desert-rock ancestry. The song opens and closes with the sound of a train travelling along the tracks, a curious framing device whose significance is anything but obvious. More compelling is Homme's understated delivery, which gives the melody an intimacy rarely encountered in his earlier work. The Wilco comparison also applies to "Insignificant Other", where intertwining guitar lines gradually accumulate weight and intensity before resolving into a chorus of considerable emotional power. Once again, Homme's singing is the principal attraction: fluid, expressive and entirely free of the arch mannerisms that have sometimes prevented his more vulnerable performances from sounding altogether sincere.

That newfound directness reaches its fullest expression on "From the Cliffs of Love Into the Blue", a splendid acoustic ballad and easily the album's finest composition. Here, Homme abandons cleverness for its own sake and allows a luminous melody to carry the song, although a slightly menacing secondary section introduces just enough unease to prevent it from becoming sentimental. There is neither vocal posturing nor any obvious attempt to subvert the emotional character of the material. It is an unusually earnest performance, and one of the finest songs Queens of the Stone Age have recorded. Ironically, the album's most convincing moment is also among its least aggressive, suggesting that the essential quality of Homme's writing has less to do with volume than with the conviction behind the music.

Elsewhere, Perfecth retains enough of his characteristic eccentricity to avoid becoming an entirely conventional singer-songwriter exercise. "Mono" combines a spectral melody with an almost trip-hop rhythmic foundation, while "Where The Goth Girls At" continues Homme's long-standing affection for wisecracking titles and mischievous lyrics. Musically, however, the latter is a relatively straightforward stoner-rock number that would not have seemed particularly out of place on Rated R. Its familiarity is welcome, not least because comparatively little of the album ventures into that territory.

"Sunday", meanwhile, revisits the song Homme co-wrote with Iggy Pop for Post Pop Depression a decade ago. It remains an excellent composition and, in this context, the closest thing to a genuinely danceable track. Yet the new recording adds relatively little to Pop's superior original, making its inclusion seem somewhat unnecessary on an otherwise concise album.

The later songs push further into gentler territory. "Easy Street" finds Homme exploring an almost operatic strain of folk songwriting, with something of Rufus Wainwright's theatrical sensibility in its vocal approach. It is another impressive showcase for his increasingly versatile voice. "Phantom Limb" continues in a similarly grungy, folk-inflected vein, and although the song is accomplished in its own right, by this stage the accumulation of restrained tempos and relatively subdued arrangements begins to feel limiting. One starts wishing for a little more fire, some sudden eruption of the band's old rock 'n' roll energy to disturb the prevailing composure.

Unfortunately, that release never quite arrives. The closing "Runaway from the Mob" begins sluggishly, its convoluted melody recalling some of Pavement's more wilfully awkward excursions, before the arrangement finally acquires additional weight in its last quarter. It is a welcome increase in intensity, but hardly the explosive conclusion that might have provided the album with a stronger sense of contrast.

This is the central paradox of Perfecth. Homme has arguably never sounded better as a vocalist, and his songwriting has acquired a degree of emotional candour that would have been difficult to imagine during the band's early years. The relative economy of the album also suggests a welcome determination to dispense with unnecessary embellishment. Yet the music, for all its melodic sophistication and occasional brilliance, seldom generates the peculiar excitement that Queens of the Stone Age once produced almost effortlessly through their collision of mechanical rhythms, distorted guitars and wonderfully perverse melodic ideas.

There is much to admire here, and occasionally a great deal to love. "From the Cliffs of Love Into the Blue" alone would justify the record's existence, while "It's Only Love" and "Insignificant Other" reveal a songwriter whose emotional vocabulary has expanded considerably. But the refinement comes with a loss of friction. Homme has become a formidable singer, perhaps at the expense of allowing himself to be the formidable rock guitarist he already was. Perfecth is a good album, occasionally a very good one, but its newfound restraint leaves one longing for some of the confrontational attitude that once made Queens of the Stone Age so exciting.

GENRE: Rock, Alternative
RELEASE DATE: October 30, 2026
PRODUCED BY: Josh Homme and Michael Shuman
LABEL: Matador Records
RATING: 7/10