“Perfecth,” per Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme, is a mark of imperfection, something just a bit off and keeps the machine hiccupping and stuttering rather than running smooth and frictionless. This is in no uncertain terms a notion that represents a lived experience for Homme, who over the past several years has experienced a messy and public divorce, a battle with cancer, and an unspecified emergency surgery.
The past decade also coincided with a creative dip in the band’s recording career, with the milestone magnus opus …Like Clockwork being followed by the underwhelming glam rocker Villains and the somewhat unfocused attempted return to form of In Times New Roman…, not quite capturing the utter spellbinding magic of QOTSA’s first six albums.
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These struggles, however, seem to have ultimately been nourishing for Homme and company. It was amidst this reconfiguring of himself that Homme successfully lobbied to play in the Catacombs of Paris, an experience which appeared to induce a reverential spiritual awe over both Homme as writer/arranger and the band as performers, followed by a quite theatrical tour. Sporting a suit and swinging a meat cleaver around like a homicidal heartbroken Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin alongside the smokey jazz combo from Hell captured the same smirking darkness wrapped up in luxurious tenebrous velvet that had marked QOTSA’s most magical years.
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The band’s new album Perfecth is, in many ways, a proper follow-up to …Like Clockwork, despite there being two albums in between. If you were to trace the passage from Lullabies to Paralyze through Era Vulgaris and into …Like Clockwork, you could describe an arc beginning in the depth of night as leather-clad goths, punks, and freaks took more and more psychedelics, speed, lines of coke, and gallons of alcohol until the frenzied broken-machine panic attack of Era Vulgaris‘ increasingly bleak backhalf, only to experience the existential comedown that passed through Clockwork as the figure surveys the wreckage and estimates the damage.
Perfecth is a cinematic reconfiguring would be the dawn of the next day. The album masquerades as a lighter affair, full of acoustic guitars and psychedelic flourish in the production, but there is a weariness to it that feels more like a heavy hearted broken but healing adult attempting to smile than anything properly sugary or complacent. The fragments of joy distributed over these songs feel hard-won rather than the cheap pop devoid of struggle some bands put down on tape.
The same arthouse wooziness of Clockwork exists here, with certain sophisticated turns of vocal inflection, chord choices, or even just richness of the arrangements calling to mind that previous superbly executed clash of emotionalities. Lead single “Easy Street” served as the perfect introduction to the album. It’s warm psychedelia reads like an almost too-bright sun shining over an expanse of grass and water while a singing figure torn up and bruised from the too-long night mutters half-ironically that after a night like that, nothing can be hard again, at least in comparison.
Each of the presumed “acoustic” tracks here play out in roughly the same way, speckled with a deliberacy and lyrical craft we haven’t seen from Homme in years that returns him to the level of gutter poet and black-eyed crooner that he at his best has always been. But then there are the cuts that have riveting abrasive production or disturbing shots of juxtapositional sound, such as the album opener “It’s Only Love.” These Era Vulgaris-style elements of sonic roughness feel like a link back to the “robot rock” early era of the band as well, providing a sense of holistic aesthetic unity to the album.
The innovations here aren’t drastic; Homme and company are not reinventing the sound of their band as much as doing slow pivots in the arrangements to highlight a warmth and brightness that wasn’t there before. Perfecth hybridizes and revitalizes Queens of the Stone Age and shows them capable of executing at the same highs as their previous excellence.
Album highlight “Insignificant Other” is the key example of this, featuring a butter smooth and loose blues jam that feels exactly like the band’s innermost heart, part ZZ Top, part David Bowie, and part stormy crooner with the mob coming quietly to collect. It’s bitter but also self-reflective, able to acknowledge the human mess that often exists in every actor of a dysfunctional breakdown, capable of being angry and mourning and being scared and remorseful all at once.
The album gradually reached its conclusion with a slow turning down of the dial rather than a proper explosive blowout, but, ultimately, that serves this collection of songs well. A heavy trite climax would run counter to the somber, thoughtful mood of the album. On Perfecth, Queens of the Stone Age sound rejuvenated and restored to power, offering a bright and exciting image of what the future might hold.
Queens of the Stone Age will support Perfecth with a Spring 2027 North American tour featuring support from Pixies and Wheelchair Sports Camp. Pick up tickets via Ticketmaster or Vivid Seats.