'We Just Do What Feels Good': Queens Of The Stone Age Strip It Back On 'Easy Street' Ahead Of An Australian Return

Guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen discusses the band's latest "palate cleanser" of a single as they prepare for a December run of dates.

Queens Of The Stone Age

It's been just over three years since the last time that stoner rock veterans Queens Of The Stone Age released a full-length album, but there's been a lot happening for the group.

While their eighth record, In Times New Roman…, arrived in June 2023 and became their sixth consecutive release to hit the Australian top ten, a local tour followed in early 2024 before the band decided to do something a little bit historic.

Venturing to Paris in July of that year, the band became the first to legally perform in the city's iconic Catacombs, with an "insider Paris official" helping facilitate the recording. A stripped-back affair, five songs were cut for the set, showcasing tunes from the previous two decades of their illustrious career.

While the recording was itself followed by an immediate cancellation of tour dates as vocalist and guitarist Josh Homme returned to the US for "emergency surgery", almost a year later, the set was released as both an EP and a live concert film and documentary.

But Queens Of The Stone Age weren't done with the Catacombs, instead taking this more reflective sound out on the road, with a number of dates occurring throughout North America and Europe as part of the fittingly-titled Catacombs Tour.

With two-dozen shows on their schedule, the group only wrapped up their international run in May, with guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen barely having any time to regroup before he jumped on a call with The Music to reflect on the band's recent happenings, and to express his fondness for their run of Catacombs dates.

"It's a real joy to do something like that," he admits. "The work that we put into it before was hard. To reimagine some of the songs that we don't normally play live – the deep cuts – and get the orchestration right, and work on our dynamics to where we're able to play super soft and then get as loud as we can with an orchestra and not drown them out.

"There was a lot of thought put into it. And to see it received the way our fans took it was very inspiring. When you hear a band is going to be out there with an orchestra, you're like, 'Oh, boy…'.

"There's so many examples of how it can go wrong," he adds. "So we really worked on it to make sure that it was this really interesting experience for us and for the audience."

Indeed, it was an interesting experience for all in attendance. While songs like No One Knows and Go With The Flow were eschewed in favour of cuts like Hideaway and Fortress receiving their first showings in years, so too did fan favourites such as "You've Got A Killer Scene There, Man..." and Mosquito Song find their way back into the setlist for the first time since 2007.

Fans had already received an idea of what to expect thanks to the Alive In The Catacombs EP, but the live experience was undoubtedly something unlike what they had seen before.

While it was impactful for the audiences, so too was it influential for the band to take this sort of lite-orchestral approach to the writing room. Though Van Leeuwen does point out that strings had never really been too far from their records over the years.

"The experience of actually doing the Catacombs [set] in the Catacombs and then doing this experience with the orchestra, I feel like it's something that we're gravitating towards more and more," he muses. "Although, now that I think of it, there's quite a bit of orchestration on all of our records.

"Sometimes you hear it, sometimes it's kind of buried in there. But even with our last record, In Times New Roman…, there's times when the orchestra takes over the mix and it's like a giant bus running the band off the road.

"I think that it would only be natural for us to, to do more stuff like that," he adds. "But when it comes to writing music, I think that we just do what feels good. I'm interested to see what we come up with after doing this experience. I think it's really opened up our eyes to approaching our music with more beauty instead of just leaning on the brutality that we're so good at."

One of the highlights for attendees of the Catacombs tour was the debut of the band's latest single, Easy Street. Featuring acoustic guitar and psych-heavy synths, the serene cut is paired with a jagged edge, boasting Nikki Lane on guest vocals throughout. It remains to be seen if this indeed an indicator of the beauty that may pepper the band's discography moving forward.

The song is also paired with a Tony Wolski and Christopher Gruse-directed music video, featuring Homme attempting to outrun a number of unique individuals, with a twist ending offering a chance to rethink our perceptions of often-dismissed outsiders.

Diehard fans may be somewhat taken aback by the track to a degree. Those who witnessed Homme as part of Kyuss back in the early '90s may never have expected such a composition from him, and even those who witnessed the creation of songs such as Mosquito Song on 2002's Songs For The Deaf may have thought this was a rare, distortion-less left turn.

As Van Leeuwen explains, the creation of Easy Street was one rooted in simplicity and a lack of pretence. As he puts it, "something we just allowed ourselves to do".

"It is a very simple three or four chord song," he explains, adding that it allowed them to "be a little bit more free with our emotions."

"So much of a lot of rock music to me – and we are part of it too – is this sort of darkness and brooding, and the heaviness of life comes through – especially on our last record. I think that a lot has happened, a lot of those expressions have come and have been expressed, and this is kind of like a cleansing of the palate.

"Easy Street is – it's in the name – it just feels right,” he concludes. “After doing the Catacombs and just relying on acoustic instruments, it's kind of nice to do that once in a while."

Van Leeuwen's use of the phrase "palate cleanser" is an interesting one, given that it traditionally refers to the idea of an interim offering that removes the residue of what came before in preparation of what comes next. Could this mean then that Easy Street is an indication of what to expect for Queens Of The Stone Age's next release, or even the first taste of their eventual ninth album?

"Right now it's just something that's just come out," he explains, indicating its status as a standalone single. "What we're going to do next, sometimes we know, sometimes we don't. I know we always have ideas.

"It's funny, but this one just seemed to come out of nowhere and it was great to test it out there on the road. There's nothing like being able to play a new song and getting a sense of how people feel about it.

"We're always creating and we make records in a way where there's still stuff left on the table, [or stuff] that's not finished," he adds. "So there's always stuff that we can go back to. But as far as right now, Easy Street kind of feels like where we're at."

While Australian fans may have missed out on the Catacombs Tour, they will however be getting a chance to see Queens Of The Stone Age venture down Easy Street when the band returns to local shores this December

While it's their first visit to Australia since 2024, the band might as well be honorary locals by this point, having toured here regularly for 25 years now.

"I've always loved coming to Australia and New Zealand," Van Leeuwen admits. "There's two main reasons. First of all, our fans there are incredible, and you know that they've missed us every time we come back. It just feels like another home.

"And there's nothing like that, especially after a 14-hour plane ride. To have that kind of welcome is always like… it just makes your life better."

The other reason Van Leeuwen is excited to return is for the support band they've got locked in. Joining Queens Of The Stone Age on the upcoming trek is alternative rock veterans Primus, who have been absent from Australian shores since 2018.

Then there's local mainstays Tropical Fuck Storm, whose near-decade of existence have seen them considered one of the country's most exciting and ferocious rock exports.

"I've been really enjoying them lately and I'm really looking forward to seeing them play live," Van Leeuwen explains. "That's kind of cool too, we get to share the stage with some local folks that we enjoy. We're always looking for new artists, or maybe that aren't so new and they have tonnes of records out.

"You know, C.W. Stoneking [who supported Queens Of The Stone Age in 2018] has a tonne of records. He's new to people [in America], but I'm sure for you guys, he's been around. I think there's a real wealth of Australian music that we get to discover all the time."

Van Leeuwen has himself been a frequent visitor to Australia, even before joining Queens Of The Stone Age. While the band landed in Australia for the first time in 2001 following the release of Rated R, Van Leeuwen wouldn't join them on-ground until 2003.

However, he'd made his local debut back in 2000, first visiting as a member of A Perfect Circle, which he co-founded the year prior following his departure from Failure. It was a tour he looks back on fondly, with his first time in the country creating an experience he still chases whenever he visits.

"It's such a different sort of vibe, and just the reception is so hugely different," he explains. "It was definitely [a feeling of] excitement, and I feel like I get that same excitement every time I go there.

"To me, it feels like maybe not so many bands get to go there often enough. It seemed like an old friend, you know? Even the first time I went, it just felt very welcoming and the appreciation from the fans is huge. So that's kind of why we can't miss going every time."

It's worth pointing out, however, that the upcoming Australian tour will be more aligned with the standard Queens Of The Stone Age live presentation instead of leaning into what has been offered on their recent Catacombs Tour.

"I feel like we took the Catacombs to a spot where we didn't get burned out on it," Van Leeuwen explains. "But we definitely made the statement, and we didn't want to overdo it. So I think a swing back towards doing the rock band is where we're headed.

"But I do think what the Catacombs tour did for us is to allow us to play some deep cuts and bring those into the bigger set; stuff that we don't normally play, which we'll decide then. But we've been talking about a bunch of songs that we haven't played in a long time."

The question of which songs need to make a comeback into the main set is one that even the most casual of Queens Of The Stone Age fans could spend hours discussing. For Van Leeuwen, the song that comes to mind for him is one that dates back to the band's 1996 debut EP – back when they were still called Gamma Ray – six years before he joined the band, and one that hasn't been played in 20 years.

"I brought this up the other day, but there's a song called Born To Hula, which was a B-side from the first record. I fucking love that song," he enthuses, referring to its inclusion on the flip-side to The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret in 2000. "I don't know if we're going to do it or not, but I brought it up. It would be rad to do that."

Though it may be a long shot, Van Leeuwen also admitted that another track which had been in contention for making a comeback was The Fun Machine Took A Shit And Died. Three days after he spoke to The Music, Queens Of The Stone Age took to the stage in Sweden and performed the track for the first time since 2014.

"We were playing Hideaway on the Catacombs tour, now we can play it and put that in our set," he adds. "That was a song that we never played off of Villains until the Catacombs.

"So it's really opened up our minds to doing some stuff that we don't normally get to do."

Tickets to Queens Of The Stone Age's upcoming tour of Australia and New Zealand go on sale from 10am on Monday, July 20th.

A number of presales take place in the days preceding, including an artist and Mastercard presale running from 11am on Thursday, July 16th until 10am on Monday, July 20th, while a Live Nation presale runs from 11am on Friday, July 17th until 10am on Monday, July 20th.