For Josh Homme, perfection has always been a moving target, if not an outright joke.
The title of Queens of the Stone Age’s new album, Perfecth, suggests as much: a gallows-humor twist on the idea that everything is fine when, in fact, you’re on a rowboat to hell. But where the band’s previous album, 2023’s In Times New Roman…, found Homme channeling life’s brutality into music as jagged and unforgiving as its title. Perfecth, due October 30 from Matador, takes a more disarming approach. At 53, the Queens frontman is done hiding behind abstraction when the truth will do.
Love, in all its contradictory forms, is the album’s animating force—the thing that can pull you out of the muck or leave you questioning whether you want to be here at all. Some of these songs date back to the early 2000s, while others were written in 2021, when Homme was navigating profound heartbreak. Together, they form a portrait of an artist reckoning with mortality, fatherhood, and the liberating possibility of saying exactly what he means. The music is no less adventurous for it, moving from the ambient unease of “It’s Only Love” to the orchestral mischief of “Where the Goth Girls At?” and the Beatles-esque simplicity of “From the Cliff.” Homme even lets the imperfections stand, embracing the human friction of musicians playing together in a room rather than sanding away every rough edge.
The record arrives after a punishing stretch in Homme’s life that included recording a difficult but long-dreamt live album in Paris’s fabled Catacombs, a cancer diagnosis, and a bitter custody dispute with ex-wife Brody Dalle, and it finds him reconnecting with what matters—not least his bandmates Troy Van Leeuwen, Michael Shuman, Dean Fertita, and Jon Theodore. The latter-day Queens lineup has spent years refining its own combustible chemistry, even as its leader has confronted the limits of control.
SPIN caught up with Homme in New York during an off-day from QOTSA’s stadium tour with Foo Fighters, whose frontman Dave Grohl has been his close friend and collaborator since their paths first crossed decades ago. As he notes, the point of Perfecth isn’t to get everything right. It’s to pay attention before the moment passes.
I can’t help but think back to seeing QOTSA, with Dave Grohl on drums, at the Songs for the Deaf release show at Bowery Ballroom in New York in May 2002. Do you remember that night?
I do. It was a lot of fun. Everyone was such a pillar of their personality, but you just knew it couldn’t last. You can’t have that many sticks of dynamite dancing with matches, but it doesn’t matter if it lasts. It matters if it happens. That’s what this life is all about—taking the risk to dance with the dynamite.
When [bassist/vocalist] Nick [Oliveri] left the band in 2004, I think you and I did the only interview you gave about it at the time.
It was a tough time. People don’t understand the stoicism of saying, I’m gonna try taking the classy approach. I don’t want to rip my friend up. I don’t think a lot of people really understood what was going on at the time. Also, people don’t know how difficult it is to reach a point where you have to fire your friend. Naysayers say nay. That’s all they can say, and you can’t pay attention to that. I would say, try firing your best friend and see how much you like it. It’s not easy. It’s not pleasurable.
Especially the timing of it, just as the band was really hitting another gear of visibility and popularity after Songs for the Deaf.
Success is a really bizarre thing and no advice will help. Every situation is situational and you’re forced to sort of learn on the job. You don’t know how you’re going to deal with it, especially when you never expected it. The mainstream bent toward us, and there was never any intention of that happening. Negotiating those feelings is very complex.
I understand. Well, I sort of understand. But let’s talk more about feelings, because this is an album very reflective of yours. Post-Catacombs, where was your head at as it pertained to QOTSA music moving forward?
In order to try to get you to withdraw your request to play the Catacombs, the people that work there would say, you can’t plug anything in, thinking it would be a deterrent. I romanticize things and look for a greater meaning, so I thought, if we ever get to do this, it will symbolize the ringing of the bell of our third act. When you’re making music early on, you’re just trying to catch up to your inspiration. You’re writing all these songs, and then there’s more. Once that goes away, you’re protecting yourself lyrically by being abstract, and that’s really just because you’re afraid to say what’s happening. But I’m 53 years old and things have happened. These more mellow, heartfelt things have been on all of our records but gone unnoticed, so much so that people would say, you’ve gotten mellow or soft! I think to myself, oh, I can point to three songs per record that you obviously missed. “I Never Came” and “Long Slow Goodbye” are on [2005’s] Lullabies To Paralyze and “Suture Up Your Future” is on [2007’s] Era Vulgaris. I realized my own culpability in putting them at the back of the record because I was too afraid to put them farther up.
This is a collection of songs, some of which are old. Some were written in 2021, which was the epicenter of me being extremely heartbroken and questioning if I should be here anymore. You realize that love can destroy you. The facets of love are so vast in what they can do. It can be the only thing that can loose you from the tar you feel you’re in and your only conduit to hope. But it can fucking destroy you where you feel almost like madness. I’ve learned enough, made enough mistakes and been a fool enough times that I’m not afraid to put those songs first now. If this means we’re ‘soft’ to you and that’s how you’re deciding whether you like something or not, I guess this is goodbye. At the end of the day, I just want it to be an accurate representation of where I’m at in my life. The only way I can make my last record be amongst my best records is to take that chance, and that’s what I really want.
I’ve never heard ambient noise on a QOTSA record before like on opener “It’s Only Love.” It seems like the perfecth way to start the album.
That title is not dissimilar from [2013’s] ...Like Clockwork in the gallows humor of, how’s it going? You’re on that rowboat to hell and you say, oh, it’s perfecth. It’s funny when you’re with someone, but it’s not funny when you’re alone. The juxtaposition of are you with people you care about or are you by yourself is a modern question. People find themselves alone a lot, and they don’t know what to do. I understand that really well. It’s worth exploring as a songwriter what that’s like. This is almost our most universal record, because it’s only about love and that’s it.
Where was that train recorded?
At Sound City, which is in a particularly terrible, depressing area of Los Angeles deep in the Valley. There’s the waft of the Budweiser beer plant from nearby. It’s next to industrial train tracks and the people that live alongside them. Production-wise, in order to capture a painful or air-quote ‘shitty’ feeling, then in a way, that moment needs to sound as shitty or raw as that feels. The question is, are you going to step in front of the train when it goes by or will you let it drive by? There’s a bit of a math equation, like, if this, then this. Let’s go right close to the train and record it, where the guy on the train is like, don’t!, with a panicked look on his face. It’s enjoyable to get close to those feelings.
The construction of the song is very simple. It’s not very long. At one point, [Mark] Lanegan was like, let me have that one, when we were writing together. That’s at least 15 or 16 years old. Jack White has said, I don’t write songs about painful or personal things because I have to sing them all the time. So, I write about amalgams of things and about someone else. I think that’s really interesting and cool, but I don’t know how to do that. I’ve of course written lyrics that are amalgams of things, but for Queens, I don’t know how to sing about somebody else. I’m just not there yet.
Does “Insignificant Other” date back to sessions for In Times New Roman…?
I had these parts, and we finished recording In Times New Roman…. It would have been very simple, with what I was going through, to write this record for In Times New Roman…, but doing a “woe is me” record at that time felt wrong to me. It felt better to sing about the brutality and the jagged edge of life instead, and make the record sound so brutal and maybe make it more about the world in general. But I knew that was only to set it up so that [Perfecth] would be possible. Get a little air. A little distance.
We recorded “Insignificant” at about midnight. The session was done, it was the last day and I just said, I’ve got one more thing. Maybe we just sketch. We played the parts and I called the arrangement out. The interesting thing about doing that is that everyone has to look at each other. You’re really listening and playing together. Tempos go like this and there’s some tuning issues and there’s little mistakes, but it sounds so fucking human. This record largely became about not even believing that you can correct anything. You can gloss it over like it never happened, but you know it happened. In a world where there’s a lot of fixing and a lot of correcting, it feels good to say, okay, well, we’re not doing that. Not in an angry way, but there’s enough of that going on. We’ll just be humans about it.
Has Queens ever sounded this Stones-y?
It is very Stones-y, yeah. We kept talking about a particular Tom Petty song, “You Got Lucky.” There’s a particular feeling that it’s nighttime and the lights are low. We’re not playing soft, but we’re not playing loud. We’re just playing. [The Stones song] “Miss You” has that feeling too. That really permeated this record.
“Where the Goth Girls At?” has a fun juxtaposition of an orchestra against a kind of meathead-y riff.
The dumbest thing I can think of! There’s been something building since [working with] Iggy [Pop]. I have this thing with Iggy: If he screams, why can’t it be so loud that it actually drowns out the mix? So, I did that. And then the next record we did after that was Villains, and I said, well, fuck. When you start a record, why can’t you turn it down so much that you turn up the stereo to get ready and then it goes [makes fast, loud noises]. Why can’t you jump scare your fans? And then for In Times New Roman…, it was like, you’re playing this music, but pretend there’s an orchestra playing the music in the next car over, and they hate you. They’re playing the same song as you, but then they t-bone you and take over before they drive away.
This song is taking all that experience and saying, this riff is so dumb. When you get to the chorus, instead of loud guitars and keyboards, what if the orchestra just does it? Isn’t that an interesting juxtaposition? Taking some extreme measures becomes so enjoyable. You start heading down these roads and then good things happen because you’re thinking this way. A lot of people may never notice any of that shit, but that’s OK. I’m not making records for them. I want you to enjoy them, but they’re for everyone else, I guess.
I wondered if the line “dying makes you feel alive” is about growing up in Palm Springs.
It 100% is. As a 13-year-old, the mall was the place to be.
Town Center in Palm Desert?
Yeah! Have you ever been?
All the time. My grandparents lived in Rancho Mirage for most of my life.
Oh, fuck yeah. The Record Alley was there! And JCPenney. I knew these three goth girls, two of whom were Mexican. Mexican goth is the gold standard. I’d get ice cream and smoke cigarettes at 13 with my skateboard, and that combination has always been nostalgic. I’d see these old ladies in their golf attire sitting at the makeup counter getting their makeup done in an extreme fashion by these goth girls. It’s like, what’s the difference between these two people? You’ll be them one day and they were you. It’s just a nostalgic take on young love. Young fascination. Young obsession. It’s like, there’s nothing for me in this town, but these goth girls, they know something. I had leather and a mohawk. In a small town, when you dress like that, you’re saying, fuck you, and fuck this place. You pay a price for doing that, and the female version of doing that was these goth girls to me. I felt like they were so strong.
“Mono” feels like something you wrote on the spur of the moment and then screamed really loudly for no apparent reason.
(laughs). That’s another one from probably 2021, in the room above my garage. It’s capturing complete heartache in real time, where you’re pausing singing because you break down, and everything is out of tune and out of time. It’s sort of shitty sounding, because that’s what that feels like. That’s about as close to the sound of feeling completely heartbroken as I could get to. But to Jack White’s point, I don’t mind singing about it. At the end of the day, I’d rather take a run at those feelings than pretend they’re not there. I’m not saying that what he’s doing, but that’s what I’m doing.
Then you nod to some White Album Beatles on “From the Cliff.” I can’t recall Queens being this foot stomp-y or acoustic.
No, but I’ve always longed to play something like that. Mike [Shuman] wrote this music when we were in New Orleans. He was in the control room playing that riff. It felt like in Eagles of Death Metal, where Jesse [Hughes] has to bring in the riffs and when one jumps out at me, I’m like, oh my god, we could do this or that. I’m always looking for ways to prove to the guys that they should bring in whatever they bring in, because when it jumps off the page, we’re gonna play it. I’ve always wanted to play a song that’s about love in an “I Want To Hold Your Hand” way. There’s a Beatles thing to it. It’s simple, naive, and pure. I’m not afraid anymore to say something like that with no poetry, because it ends up being poetic because of that. So many times, I’m so obsessed with trying to find the right word, and instead I throw out the word “it.” It’s so rare when all the words come in one go. I can count them on one hand, and “Go With the Flow” was one of them. You feel really lucky. Johnny Cash had a great quote saying, I’m not the creator of the music. I’m its deliverer. You’re largely like a butler. You’re waiting for the phone to ring so you can make tea and take it upstairs. If you really listen to this album, you know it’s real and that it’s the best I can do.
You and Iggy already recorded ‘Sunday’ for Post Pop Depression in 2016. What were you looking for in your own version that would offer a counterpoint to his?
We needed something jiggly and bubbly. This album sequenced itself and it was the easiest one to make in I don’t even know how long. When I wrote the main parts of “Sunday,” I almost kept it for myself, but then the next morning in Joshua Tree, I said to Iggy, I love you and I want you to know you have everything I have to give, and the only way I can prove that is to say I was going to keep this for myself. If I ever need it, I’ll cover it, and you’ve already laid out this “China Girl” pathway. The guys were sort of non-plussed about us re-recording it, because familiarity breeds some contempt. We got a really great musical take, but I found myself just mimicking Iggy. All of the sudden, something clicked about the ’70s French disco of it. I started to hear the swirl of these countermelodies. I hoped it would make the record, and as soon as we mixed it, we were all dancing around.
What did Nikki Lane bring to “Easy Street?“
We’re obviously not Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, but there’s a strength to it lyrically. It’s all predicated it on a wish: I wish I could find Easy Street, and if I did, I promise I’d tell you where it was. And if you ever find it, you swear to tell me. Can we go together? So, it felt like it needed a female counterpart. I’ve recorded with Nikki and she really saved my life in a way by asking me to work with her. It was such a terrible time for me, and she really pulled me up and gave me a chance. She’s so strong and powerful and type A and large and in charge. A duet is something we haven’t done, and after all, it’s really about doing something I haven’t done in a way that still seems like us.
You were referring to the ‘no poetry’ thing earlier, and “Phantom Limb” doesn’t have much artifice. Is this about going on a guided drug trip?
I’ve been doing that in January to start my year. They’re interior explorations. I’ve been told that I metabolize drugs and medicines quickly (laughs), so it ends up being nine or 10 grams of mushrooms. A sincere dosage, mixed with pure MDMA and injections of ketamine. It’s a really deep dive. Learning to accept and let go was such the hallmark of this year’s thing. If you want to have quality, you have to be present. If you have kids, you have to get on your knees and look at them from their level. “Phantom Limb” was another where we got everything in one go. I went at 8 in the morning and by 3:30, even though I was still in the loving arms of this thing, I had a car waiting to drive me to the studio. Everyone was there waiting for me to show up, but I memorized all the words: “no poets here to interfere.” I know, ironically, that it’s one of the more poetic things I’ve said, but the message was, I will not get in the way of myself with flowery words in an attempt to over-intellectualize saying I love you. Some words are tough to get across your lips. Plus, I’d been listening to a lot of Alice in Chains. I don’t think I could admit to myself that I liked them as a younger, arrogant guy. The power in their harmonies and in Layne [Staley]’s voice, and the studiousness of [Jerry] Cantrell’s playing. We needed this song to be there because it’s a rock ‘n roll song driven by acoustic guitar.
Grohl is back on drums on the closer, “Run Away From the Mob.” Why was it the best way to end the album, and why did it take so long to complete?
It’s 25 years old, and the recording is from 2013, I think. At times when I had something but it wasn’t quite done, I would force-finish it. You inherently knew that because you forced it, it really could have been 20% better. Dave Grohl said to me, not every song needs to be your best song. And I said, why? What if it is? You just don’t know. So, after forcing a couple songs earlier, I thought, you know what it really is? I’m not qualified to finish this. It’s me. This thing has all this possibility. I would choose to not listen to it and every once in a while hum it to myself and see if it’s there. All the recording was done. It was just the lyric and figuring out how the vocal went.
Having experienced enough close-to-death things, I didn’t realize it was a letter to my middle son, like, if I’m gone and this place goes to shit, here’s what you should know. It’s the perfect last song because some chord changes just have “Hallelujah” on them. We have another song called “Made to Parade” where the ending feels like hands outstretched and uplifting. This had that. Sonically, it has some optimism. There are lyrics, but they don’t match that feeling.
Have you had enough time to ponder where Perfecth falls in the QOTSA catalog, or what specifically makes you proud about it?
I think it falls in the right spot. It could not have gotten here without all these other things. I’ve been all kinds of things in my life. Cocky. Out of my mind. Sturdy. Dependable. Utterly undependable. But the biggest takeaway from the last bunch of years is that I want to be a good listener. I don’t want to miss the important things coming out of the people I really love, or slip by my ears and travel to nowhere. This record is the right time for us because it’s based on getting down on both knees and meeting people where they’re at. It took everything to get here to make this, and I’m really proud of it because you can distill it all down to something simple: make something you think is cool. We’re far beyond participating in the mainstream, so this is not even an act of revolt or something. Red carpets and stadiums aren’t my focus here.
Having recently listened to the Them Crooked Vultures record with the windows down in L.A., I couldn’t help but wonder if you, Grohl, and John Paul Jones might ever make another one.
The great thing about this tour is that you play one day and then you don’t play one day. Dave’s been renting a car and he and I have been going on adventures. We go to breakfast all the time and things like that, but it’s different when it’s just me and him and there’s seven hours of being friends. We’re talking about all kinds of stuff and we both understand how cool it would be to take one more lap in this thing. So, it’s definitely a conversation. Each of us have jobs. It’s not my job to put it together. It’s his job to pick up the phone and do that. I see Jones on the reg, and I know there’s this desire. It’s a lot like jumping into double dutch. You don’t want to take a rope to the face, so it’s really about how to jump in.
Are you and Dave running mundane errands or are you going on any adventures?
We went and found his grandma’s burial plot at a cemetery in Ohio and saw his boyhood home. Then I took him to Bass Pro Shops for the first time ever and then we found a fireworks store, which was massive. We were the only ones in there and we spent a lot of money (laughs). It’s nice to just, alone together, be friends. Sometimes it’s hard to actually get that window. I met him when I was 19, and by this point, we’ve been through all kinds of crazy shit. That’s hard to understand and reconcile and navigate, but it makes that friendship really valuable. It means a lot to me, because who else would understand?