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ark Ronson is synonymous

with the dance and pop

goliaths of the music industry.

But while churning up some

seriously propulsive, rockabilly

stylings on new album

Villains

Queens Of The Stone Age

decided the British producer was

just the ticket. “He’s got anger

issues,” Dean Fertita chuckles.

“No, he’s a sweetheart, he’s

very easy to work with. We’ve

kind of brushed paths over the

years, and I’ve always liked him,

so to have an opportunity to

work with him was really cool.

And going into it, I think from

an outside perspective, we

both had something to lose, or

risk. We knew there was a little

gamble there for both of us. But

it made for a really exciting work

environment, it really did.”

Across its no-space-wasted

nine tracks,

Villains

includes

jousting melodic guitar lines, a

Cake-like cheekiness in some

of Michael Schuman’s agile

basswork, a voodoo blues feel

to frontman Josh Homme’s

vocals (finishing a phrase by

flinging his voice up to a high,

vibrating “ooh”) and a special

approach to time signatures.

Stand-out

Domesticated Animals

constantly (and randomly) rotates

INTERVIEW

Amid the band's Splendour sideshows, we sat down with Queens Of The

Stone Age's Dean Fertita (keys, guitar, percussion) to talk new album

Villains

are grouped into a certain era that matches a

time in my life. A lot of these recordings were

made in Hawaii, and Florida and Califonia. The

album has a very coastal feeling to me.

There’s a honking sound on

Melody Unfair

which could be a goose and it could be

your heel rubbing against the bottom of the

bathtub or it could be electronic. Is there

deliberate ambiguity in these sounds?

It's always a challenge to make certain

sounds feel organic and not too mechanical. I

feel like it has as much to do with the sounds

as how they are worked into, and groove

with, the other instruments. I’ve always liked

acoustic sounds that sound electronic. The

majority of the instruments on the record are

acoustic so I think I was definitely going for

that ambiguity, yeah.

What made you move from the boingy jaw

harp into the very contemplative acoustic

guitar drone halfway through

aw one for J

I kind of view this record as

my attempt at making some sort

of personal Americana or even

world folk lore music, and yet

also documenting emotions and

circumstances in my life. I associate

the jaw harp and similar sounds with

American folk music and African folk

music. I wanted the record to feel like a collage

of those elements. The drone part of the song

is a spiritual hymn of sorts. It’s dedicated to

Dylan Rieder and my aunt Jackie Baetz, hence

their initials DR and J being a part of the title.

They both passed away last year unfortunately.

Do the two

Lunch

(es)

Out Of Order

have any reference to Burroughs’

Naked Lunch

No but it’s interesting that you

mention Burroughs because I am very

interested in his tape recorder and

cut and paste techniques. You could

say there is a bit of that in this record.

ZKR

between three or four beats

per bar – just when you think

you’ve got it, they’ll pound into

a chorus a beat early. “There’s a

lot of that – Josh calls it ‘orbital’

song arrangements, where it’s

always turning and changing

just a little bit as the song goes

on,” Fertita explains. “We didn’t

sit down and say ‘Let’s do a

weird time signature’, we just

played and thought ‘That sounds

interesting, what if it does this

here?’” And do they chart it?

No, they do not. “We don’t write

stuff down, we kind of just yell it

out,” Fertita smiles. “A lot of eye

communication, you know?”

There are some unexpected

and subtle crumbs of brass,

auxiliary percussion and other

atmospheric knickknacks (see:

the rapid in-and-out breathing

Head Like A Haunted

House

, recalling the awesome

Speaking In Tongues

by Homme’s

secondary band Eagles Of Death

Metal) and without drawing

aside the curtain, Fertita says

it’s important to the band to set

the scene with those

elements. “It’s another

thing Mark’s great at –

the devil’s in the details,

right?" he asks. "So you

can go and listen back to a

lot of this, and pick up new

things. For me, that was

always my favourite part

about listening to records

– discovering stuff.”

ZKR

Eucalyptus

by Avey Tare

is out now via

Domino.

Read the full interview online at

stack.com.au

...it’s always

turning and

changing just a

little bit as the

song goes on

Villains

Queens Of The

Stone Age is

out Aug 25 via

Remote Control.

QUEENS OF THE

STONE AGE

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