QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE

HOMME BOYS

Queens of the Stone Age return to the rock on their new …Like Clockwork

 

by Matt Ashare |  
Published June 5, 2013

Josh Homme clearly possess some kind of killer super stealth charisma that isn't always apparent from the way he's tended to carry himself on stage. He emerged in the early-’90s as the one of the shaggy stoners in the monolithic California hard-rockers Kyuss, an über-grunge band from desert country whose commitment to monster riffs made Soundgarden sound a bit tame in comparison, before relocating for a time to Seattle to launch his current brainchild, the ever-evolving Queens of the Stone Age. The first time I saw the Queens, sometime in the fall of ’98, the trio — at least, I think they there were three of them on stage — played from behind an all but impenetrable veil of backlit fog, with Homme's burly guitar set on stun, his affectless voice surfacing from time to time in the churn of undulating distortion, and the shadow of his solid 6'5" frame looming menacingly around a microphone stand, as if he hadn't quite come to terms with his new role as a frontman. By the time I caught up with them a couple of years later, Homme, sporting a severe buzz cut, was still a rather reserved presence on stage, and whatever magnetism he was generating was mostly overshadowed by the antics of the band's sorta first bassist, Nick Oliveri, who ended the set by taking off all of his clothes.
    And yet, from his outpost in the dessert regions north of Los Angeles, Homme, who was actually born in Joshua Tree and now resides with his wife Brody Dalle (of the Distllers and Spinerette) and family in Palm Springs, has projected a kind of gritty allure that's brought an eclectic array of friends, admirers, and musical luminaries into the Queens' orbit. Indeed, while the new QOTSA album "…Like Clockwork," the band's sixth long-player and first in six years, features a typically rejiggered alignment of full-time enablers (longtime second guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen, keyboardist Dean Fertita, bassist Michael Shuman, and former Mars Volta drummer Jon Theodore), the credits list is quite a bit longer than that. Most of the drums on the album were played by Foo Fighter Dave Grohl, who's been a Homme collaborator on and off for the past decade, most recently on a track the pair recorded with Trent Reznor on the "Sound City: Real to Reel" soundtrack, and in the side-project Them Crooked Vultures with none other than Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones. And Reznor, along with Dalle, Jake Shears of the Scissor Sisters, Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner, and former Screaming Trees singer Mark Lanegan all show up to lend a hand, as does the one and only Elton John, who easily earns the award for most improbably cameo this time around.
    Six years is a relatively long break between albums, but Homme, a polymath of sorts, hasn't exactly been and idle soul. In addition to writing and recording a pair of songs with Grohl for the "Sound City" project, and releasing a self-titled album with Them Crooked Vultures that won a 2011 Grammy for "Hard Rock Performance," he found time to get behind the board and produce "Suck It and See," the fourth studio album from Brit-rockers Arctic Monkeys. Oh, and in 2011, the Queens' now seminal eponymous 1998 debut, was reissued in remastered form, and the band toured behind it, playing the album in its entirety. An expanded and remastered version of the second QOTSA long player, 2000's "Rated R" was repacked and reissued in 2010.
    Some artists figure out what they do well and pretty much stick to it. There are elements on that in Homme: with Kyuss he proved to be a master of the mammoth guitar riff, and that's a talent he's continued to wield with the Queens. Other artists — David Bowie comes to mind as a particularly striking example — are more like hungry sponges: they seek out and soak up an array of influences and approaches and, through a recombinant process, regularly integrate various strands of the new with the old. Homme's no stranger this process either. From 1998 through 2003, he was instrumental in organizing a series of recordings dubbed "Desert Sessions" that served as a proving ground of sorts for ideas that came to fruition on the first several QOTSA albums, as Homme integrated psychedelic textures and relaxed melodies into the band's relentless roil and churn aesthetic, steering the band away from stock hard-rock metal alloys toward something more elusive and alluring. (Ten volumes of "The Desert Sessions" have been released on five compilations.) And, after the Queens toured with Nine Inch Nails in 2005, Homme began incorporating more electronics into his guitar-based strategies for sound.
    Homme's had plenty to digest since QOTSA last convened in the studio — from the Zeppelin-and-beyond constructions of Them Crooked Vultures, to the slyly skewed songcraft of Arctic Monkeys — and it shows on "…Like Clockwork." But, the usually somewhat reserved Homme has been bearing some personal scars in the press of late, and has revealed that much of the new album was inspired by a stint he spent in the hospital after complications from knee surgery in the fall of 2011 led to what he's described as a brush with death, followed by four depressed months in bed. That would account for the I-have-survived sentiment of the uncharacteristically wistful and poetic piano-based power ballad "The Vampyre of Time and Memory," a unusually mellow and dramatic confessional track that finds Homme breaking sad as he sings "I've survived, I speak, I breathe, I'm incomplete, before drifting toward a Thom Yorke-style falsetto and asking "Does anyone ever get this right?"
    "Vampyre" isn't the only ruminative piano ballad on the disc, or the only melancholy display Homme's vulnerable side. "Holding on too long is just fear of letting go," he muses in a more unsteady falsetto on the disc's title track, a halting Pink Floydian reverie that takes flight on a gorgeously wrought slide-guitar solo. And there's more spareness in "Kalopsia," the track Reznor is primarily credited on. The title comes from a word that defines the state of feeling things are more beautiful than they are, "Kalopsia" the song comes bathed in airy yet ominous ambience, with Homme dispelling his demons with a wave ("Bye, bye black balloon, see you real soon. . .") until Grohl's hammering backbeat crashes in and serrated guitars disrupt the placid mood and Homme, who's never really showcased his lyrics, waxes somewhere in the neighborhood of poetic: "Copy cats in cheap suits all playing it safe/While cannibals with their noose consume a parade."
    Elsewhere on "…Like Clockwork," Homme, Grohl, and the rest of the Queens hew closer to the path these guys have beaten before. Big guitars, muscular drumming, thundering bass, and tricky rhythmic shifts dominate "My God Is the Sun," a remembrance of things past that takes Homme back to his desert rocking days: "Healing, like fire from above/Kneeling, my god is the sun," he incants on the chorus. It may be familiar terrain for Homme, for his bandmates, and for longtime fans of QOTSA, but it remains oddly fertile soil for fans of the hard stuff. In fact, it's fair to say at this point that if anyone can ever really be said to have gotten this stuff right, then Homme is easily among them. That we're now seeing a more sentimental and reflective side of Homme's Queens is a kind of bonus. Oh, and that really is Elton John banging the keys on "Fairweather Friends," a prog-rocking epic that, like most of QOTSA, is mainly about roaring guitars and pounding drums.