«Perfecth» is the ninth album by Queens of the Stone Age, Josh Homme signs nine songs on the different forms of love
Queens-of-the-Stone-Age-Perfecth-ALBUM-2026
I’ve never been a big Queens of the Stone Age fan. My watch with them had stopped at «Songs for the Deaf», 2002, an album that landed like a punch in the stomach.
From the video of No One Knows I keep a crystal clear memory: the deer on the asphalt, the impact, and me overwhelmed with him by the wall of sound that Homme, Nick Oliveri, Dave Grohl and Mark Lanegan had built in the studio. In the video the deer eventually got up and took his revenge. I, however, lost them along the way: a few distracted listens over the years, nothing that stayed with me.
Twenty-four years later comes «Perfecth», the ninth album by Queens of the Stone Age. Homme and Troy Van Leeuwen remain from that season. The flame is the same as then, only lower.
The title is a misspelled word on purpose. Homme added an “h” to “perfect” because perfection, he claims, has never been an honest word:
Nothing in this world is perfect, but everything seems to be perfecth. It’s a fun title when you’re in a group, but it’s not fun at all when you’re alone and you realize how imperfect everything is.”
The previous album, “In Times New Roman…” from 2023, Homme had written during the divorce and the child custody case, a few months after Lanegan’s death.
He admits that these songs waited years because he wasn’t yet “qualified to finish them.” Coming from someone who spent three decades playing hard to get in American rock, it has a certain effect. The record was recorded in pieces, between Los Angeles and New Orleans, at different times and without a map.
The best song is Insignificant Other, held by the second of only two takes: the quintet plays loose, each leaves room for the others and the mistakes remain inside. Homme sings about someone who was your whole world and one day disappears, over a slow groove from after midnight.
Easy Street, the first single, was recorded as an audition, without clicks, with acoustic guitars and some psychedelic synth puffs. Nashville country singer Nikki Lane enters with a rough voice that pushes against Homme’s softer line. Of the entire album, it is the piece that takes its title most literally.
In Mono the mixing starts closed in a single channel and expands in stereo to an almost orchestral opening. It’s the most stripped down song on «Perfecth» and the smartest production choice.
Sunday track written with Iggy Pop and already released ten years ago on «Post Pop Depression», the Iggy album that Homme had produced for him. Recorded in New Orleans on the eve of Mardi Gras, Homme freed it from the roughness of Iggy and pushed it towards a French dance floor disco, with backing vocals from Jake Shears of the Scissor Sisters and bubbles over a lyric that asks what it’s all for. It works, but in an album of nine songs a repechage weighs more than it would in one of fourteen.
Each song seems to come from a different area,” says Homme, and claims it.
You can feel it: what holds the nine songs together is only the theme, and anyone looking for the steamroller compactness of «Songs for the Deaf» will be left empty-handed.
«Perfecth» didn’t bring me back into the fandom. He made me listen to Queens again, and after twenty-four years that’s already a lot.
SCORE: 7.50
TO LISTEN NOW
It’s Only Love – Insignificant Other – Mono – Sunday
TO BE SKIPPED IMMEDIATELY
No skip. The album is very enjoyable and can be listened to
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