June 18, 2023 by A.S. Van Dorston

Josh Homme’s pain is our gain, with his best album in nearly two decades.

A common failure of album reviews, particularly in the mainstream, is their obsession behind the real-life events happening in the artists’ lives. Yes, Josh Homme has gone through some shit, as everyone inevitably does. But that doesn’t really need to have any relevance with their songwriting. Many great artists might have absolutely nothing interesting happening in their lives, but their imaginations spark the most amazing creations. Good, bad, happy, sad, Homme is thankfully very consistent with his high quality songwriting. Lucky for him and us, as it’s been his only profession out of high school for the past 33+ years. And when he takes six years off between albums, it gives Queens of the Stone Age fans time to circle back to their lesser appreciated albums and realize they’re all pretty damn great. For example, “Little Sister,” from Lullabies to Paralize (2005) has enjoyed a renaissance, featured on lists of best songs with cowbell, though it’s actually a jam block. Villains (2017), which was unfairly slapped around, is much closer to the more lauded …Like Clockwork (2013) than it was given credit for.

And now, with rock having been officially unfashionable going on two decades, and all the mainstream listeners have been left with are Foo Fighters and Greta Van Fleet, people are freakin’ starving for good rock music. I’m confident responses to QOTSA’s eighth album will be very favorable, and people will be slavering to see them live. Not that there’s any lack of great rock in the underground, but it’s nice to see our iconic stars do good. Fortunately, In Times New Roman... is better than just good. So far on day three of listening, it’s playing quite well along with the band’s best material.

In re-listening to the band’s catalog the past couple weeks, their sound has remained relatively consistent, aside from the fact that they pretty much entirely left behind the stoner/desert rock sound of their self-titled debut. Elements of stomping glam (“Made to Parade,”) and motorik robot rock rhythms (“Negative Space,” “Time & Place”) will sound familiar to longtime fans, but tweaked with some impressive rhythmic signatures courtesy of Jon Theodore and bassist Michael Shuman. Those tunes and particularly “Paper Machete” are front loaded with some of the most consistently memorable hooks we’ve heard for a few albums.

Various forms of Led Zeppelin-isms have oozed into their music even before Homme collaborated with John Paul Jones on Them Crooked Vultures (2009). Here the oldest influences interestingly result in some of the freshest sounds, primarily the use of a four piece (violins, viola, cello) string section to inject Middle Eastern style melodies into “Obscenery,” “Straight Jacket Fitting,” “Carnavoyeur,” and “Sicily.” The latter two are possibly the most unique and adventurous tracks on the album. Homme continues to toy with creative vocal harmony arrangements, one of the most startling is on the killer chorus on “Emotion Sickness.”

The guitar sounds are more consistently thick and satisfying since probably Lullabies, though the kerfuffle over Mark Ronson’s production of the last album is overblown, given that there was still plenty of heavy guitar sounds, their clipped and compressed distortion carried over onto this album’s “What the Peephole Say.” What I do miss, however, is the liquidy psychedelia of my favorite tunes from Rated R (2000), “Better Living Through Chemistry” and “Auto Pilot,” which they’ve never really revisited, unless you count the somewhat spacey “Sicily.” I was also a fan of R‘s lengthy album closer “I Think I Lost My Headache,” that ends with squalling horns that connected The Stooges’ “L.A. Blues” with Radiohead’s “The National Anthem.” 23 years later, they one-up that closer with the suitably apocalyptic 9:01 “Straight Jacket Fitting” which, after it’s noisy extended crescendo, chills out with some acoustic strumming as we gaze forlornly at the wasted, smoking landscape.