STACK Aug #154

NEWS MUSIC

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 . QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE

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 on 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

M 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

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

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

...it’s always turning and changing just a little bit as the song goes on

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

Villains by Queens Of The Stone Age is out Aug 25 via Remote Control.

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.

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 DR aw one for J ? I kind of view this record as

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

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

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

Eucalyptus

by Avey Tare is out now via Domino.

Read the full interview online at stack.com.au

11

st154_091-090_MUSIC Room 4-5.indd 2

24/7/17 3:02 pm