At Sheffield’s Rock N Roll Circus he reeled off the classics with aplomb – and with less of his trademark macho swagger
Midway through Queens of the Stone Age’s set tonight, frontman Josh Homme makes the most unexpected of announcements. “I’m running for Mayor of Sheffield,” he says, grinning widely enough to fill the Don Valley Bowl.
There are a number of disqualifying factors that doom his bid before it’s begun, chief among them that he resides in California. His failure to recall that he’s ever been here before is an issue, too; he wrongly pronounces this two-night stand to be his band’s first visit to the Steel City, but they did in fact play the legendary, recently closed Leadmill all the way back in 2000.
We can chalk up Homme’s forgetfulness to his lifelong, voracious appetite for mind-altering substances; the Queens track “Feel Good Hit of the Summer”, which lists the drugs he took on one particular bender in matter-of-fact fashion, would preclude most people from ever holding public office.
And yet, he seems curiously clean-cut tonight, like he’s been heating up for the campaign trail; he looks sharp, trim, match-fit, and sounds it, too. Long-time Queens devotees will know that to expect a sober Homme onstage is to set yourself up for disappointment, but a profoundly turbulent recent few years in his personal life – involving a bout with cancer, an ugly, very public child custody struggle, and a medical emergency that torpedoed last summer’s European tour – seems to have sharpened his focus.
Homme is at the top of his game, and it helps that he is backed by the tightest live lineup in the band’s history. Jon Theodore is thunderous on drums, and guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen blends fire and ice in the way that he reels off incendiary riffs with cool passivity. They play inside a big-top tent as part of this curious festival, Rock N Roll Circus, named in a nod to the 1968 Rolling Stones concert film and featuring, between acts, actual circus performers on trapeze and tightrope.
There is nothing quite so flamboyant about Queens of the Stone Age’s set, which is largely pointed and purposeful. Classics are reeled off with aplomb; “No One Knows” ignites an early chant-along, an extended version of the sultry “Make It Wit Chu” has lighters in the air, and there’s particularly furious takes on “Sick, Sick, Sick” and “Go with the Flow”. Elsewhere, there’s a muted response from the crowd to tracks from their last album, 2023’s In Times New Roman, suggesting that if those songs haven’t landed with the fans by now, perhaps they never will.
The most poignant moment arrives when Homme suddenly cuts off part way through “Emotion Sickness”, one of a number of newer songs that are beginning to threaten a mid-set lull. He appears visibly moved by a flag paying tribute to the late former Queens singer Mark Lanegan, and swiftly instructs his bandmates to launch into the stormy 2002 track “Hangin’ Tree” on which Lanegan provided lead vocals.
He doesn’t have the register to do the original justice, but then neither would anybody else – when critics would describe Lanegan’s voice as gravelly, they meant that he really did sound as if his vocal cords had been dragged along a dirt road. The emotion of the moment sees Homme through, though; it’s a humanising glimpse of vulnerability from a frontman who’s usually the image of macho swagger. Perhaps he is mayoral material after all.
Queens of the Stone Age play Don Valley Bowl Sheffield again tonight and the Royal Albert Hall London on 29 October qotsa.com/tour
