And by revisiting the familiar territory of sun-kissed desert blues, the Queens head honcho works through his demons from a place of strength and safety. Retreating from the Mark Ronson-produced reinvention heard on Villains six years prior, In Times New Roman… is a cathartic exercise in back-to-basics QOTSA. To its credit, Villains might succeed as an exercise in growing up gracefully, but for a group once so tantalisingly combustible, it’s hard to square that circle. Notable for Mark Ronson overseeing production and a more accessible, retro-disco boogie timbre, there’s so little of the spark that makes the best Queens records such hard rock essentials. That there’s only nine of them and the album has a run time of 48 minutes tells its own tale.
Yes, the band progressively feels like a solo vehicle in all but name anyway, but these throwaway songs simply aren’t up to the high standards QOTSA have established. Perhaps in his long-stated desire to make funky robot trance tunes Josh Homme was always destined to land somewhere like here, but this cartoonish, self-satisfied, wink of an album might have been better off released as a side project or as a bona fide solo effort.
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