Queens Of The Stone Age is staging a comeback with their upcoming album Villains, their first new record since 2013’s …Like Clockwork, but they might not sound exactly as we remember them. In a recent interview, Josh Homme told Rolling Stone that the more uptempo Villains is that way “just because I like to dance,” and he said that of all things, a Bruno Mars song was a significant inspiration:
“I think maybe music people might not understand the vast overlap of the curves between Ronson and Queens. If you listen to ‘Uptown Funk,’ you hear that tight, kind of vacuous dry sound, and that’s where I wanted to take this new Queens record. I wanted it to be like our record Songs for the Deaf, but looking at it with goggles on underwater – that kind of clarity. Also, he’s as obsessed with drum beats as I am.”
The band teamed up with Ronson to produce this album, so that influence make sense. From the sound of it, there are a lot of influences to be found on the record beyond “Uptown Funk.” In the interview, Homme and guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen mentioned Foghat, Clockwork Orange composer Wendy Carlos, Tupac’s “California Love,” T. Rex, and Cab Calloway as musical wells from which they drew.
Read the rest of the conversation here.
