Josh Homme Sets QOTSA Album Rumors Straight

In the traffic junkie’s quest for maximum clicks, music sites all over the planet have been running wild with ambiguous quotes, proclaiming that Queens Of The Stone Age are back in the studio, hard at work on their sixth album. It’s equal parts sheer excitement, wishful thinking and hack journalism that allows the false stories and hopes to take flight, and though the band’s near and dear to our hearts we’ve been waiting for some more solid confirmation of events before moving forward with any news.

That confirmation arrived over the past few hours, as an interview with Queens frontman Josh Homme aired yesterday on Zane Lowe’s BBC Radio 1 show, revealing that the entire process of making a new album is still in the very early stages. Recounting that he’d just come back from the desert where he’d “just been enjoying playing again,” it became clear that recent weeks have been about “reconnecting with playing just for playing’s sake, and falling back in love with the music. It’s been so long since I’ve been able to just enjoy playing without any sort of modicum of pressure, and I like to take it back to that,” Homme explained.

In other words, the guy needed to get back among the lizards and cactus to return to center, recharge his mojo and gear up for the next chapter of musical adventure. “I think the key, really, is to sort of be in love,” Homme confessed. “For me, it’s all about the love. I need to be in love with the music, and sometimes you need to take some time away to appreciate what it is.”

Lastly, when critically inferior John Peel disciple Zane Lowe finished his oddly backhanded, condescending interview with a defeatist summation on new album news, Homme promised that “it’ll be this year” that we see new material from the guys.

In further confirmation of (limited) progress, QOTSA guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen also recently told FasterLouder that the band’s new album is a blues-inspired affair, saying, “We all love the blues, and we all love to boogie…On the other side, there might be some new scenes. It’s really early in the process and it’s not too defined what it is, but we’re all feeling really great about it and there’s no shortage of ideas. We’re trying to filter the best of the best.”

According to Van Leeuwen, the band’s allowing the creative momentum to build naturally for the new Queens album, an essential part of the process for the guys.  “We’re at the early parts of the record, there’s still some writing going on. We’re a band that doesn’t push things, things naturally happen, and they are, and we’re kinda sprinkling this year with some touring for the re-release of the debut and then doing some recording. It’s going to be a creative time, and that’s good, but we’re still early on.”

The band’s long-delayed self-titled reissue will finally arrive on March 7, with Domino Records picking up the ball that was dropped by two previous labels over the past year. As we mentioned a while ago, the re-issue of Queens Of The Stone Age has been worked from the original tapes with the tracks The Bronze, These Aren’t The Droids You’re Looking For and Spiders and Vinegaroons added as bonus tracks. Listen to those tracks here.

Additionally, the band is planning on performing the album in full at their upcoming Spring UK shows and inevitably beyond, a practice Homme says was inspired by going to see Cheap Trick play their first three records live. Fans can expect them to “be very faithful to the first record” during these shows, but Homme promises “a few other things” as well.

Listen to the interview on the BBC.

Photo: Charlyn Ramblewray