Joshua Homme on Queens Of The Stone Age’s new album: ‘Tonally and emotionally and lyrically brutal’

Queens Of The Stone Age frontman Joshua Homme has recently spoken to Chicago’s Q101 radio station about the lyrical inspiration for the band’s latest album, “In Times New Roman…”

In Homme’s words:

Look, everyone’s had a really interesting and difficult — or I’ll say precarious — four years. And I too have had that. And when making something, I like to put everything I’ve got into it; that’s what I care about. But you don’t know if it’s gonna be behind, ahead or just out of sync with its own time frame. I’m starting to think maybe this is a record that’s at least accurate for its time frame. ‘Cause it is is brutal, and there’s not a lot of mellow… ‘Carnavoyeur‘ is about as mellow as it gets. But that’s okay too, because these are the times we’re living in, my man.

About the way personal losses affected his mindset while working on the album, Homme said:

Well, I think it would be a shame to hold on to things when the reality is they’re gone. I think learning to accept that I had this thing and it’s gone now… An example I would use is friends dying — I can still love them. I don’t need to stop loving these people. And I think accepting the reality for what it is, is the goal. I think even though our record is quite tonally and emotionally and lyrically brutal, I think acceptance is kind of the mantra of the record. Because it’s a shame to hold on too tight when something is gone and act like it isn’t. I think facing the reality of it all is the way to accept something.

That’s not to say this is a downer record. We’re all living the film of our lives, and this is the soundtrack to mine. And I think we made this as honest as possible in the hopes that it attracts somebody who is in a moment when they need something to be just real for them.

My expectation or desire isn’t to be the biggest thing ever. I’d like to be in the realest thing I can possibly be in. And I don’t have much more expectation than that. And that’s why it’s nice… When things go well, it’s a nice break from the rest.