Queens of the Stone Age have always remained enduringly, singularly magnetic. It isn’t just their sound. It’s their spirit. They are provocative in the most essential sense: unafraid to explore the dark, the sexual, the surreal, the absurd. It’s art that snarls and seduces in equal measure, and never more so than on the band’s ninth album, Perfecth, due Oct. 30 from Matador Records.
Out today is latest single “Insignificant Other,” which could be considered the album’s centerpiece. It’s the second of only two takes and captures the quintet playing loose and unguarded and making space for one another on the fly. “It’s a song about distance,” says frontman Joshua Homme. “About how someone can be your entire world only to simply vanish. And about the strange vertigo of being on the receiving end of that.”
Listen to “Insignificant Other” HERE.
Produced by Homme and band member Michael Shuman, Perfecth will be available on CD, Standard Black Vinyl everywhere, on Clear Vinyl at Indie Retailers and as a limited Deluxe Edition — a gatefold LP package which includes handwritten lyrics, stationary, ‘stamps’ housed inside a custom envelope as well as a bespoke piece of art temporarily placed in a custom pocket — exclusively on the QOTSA and Matador webstores. Pre-order is available HERE.
Birthed from sessions tracked everywhere from New Orleans to Los Angeles, the music is fearless and boundless, moody and menacing, gentle and strange. Here, Queens have moved a career’s worth of jagged pieces into alignment. “Every song sounds like it’s from a different world,” says Homme. “And that’s on purpose, because it’s trying to stitch together all these emotions revolving around love, lust, foolishness, and the sort of wisdom that comes as a gift from all that.”
The record is called Perfecth because “perfect,” as a word, has never been honest. It doesn’t exist. So, Homme broke the word and made it “perfecth,” a more appropriate spelling for a term that never felt right to begin with. “Nothing in this world is perfect, but everything seems to be ‘perfecth’,” he explains. “And that title is funny when you’re in a group, but it ain’t so funny when you’re alone.”
While fans await the new album, they can air their gripes and grievances, moans and groans, chagrin’, carpin’, and any judgements they wish to pass via the official Queens of the Stone Age Complaint Hotline at +1 (760) 437-1966. Callers may even find a live ear at the other end of the line.
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