Queens of the Stone Age Loosen Up: Pitchfork's Eight New Albums

Queens of the Stone Age released their new album Perfecth on Matador this week, and Pitchfork says it is some of the stoner-rockers' most relaxed and spacious music in years. The band has been around three decades. Their 2023 album, In Times New Roman…, dwelt on how twisted, messy and dark life can get. Now, Pitchfork writes, "nobody's perfect, but you can be perfecth" — coming to terms with your own blemishes seems like the logical next step, and on the record you can hear the band "loosening their shoulders after a long, grueling battle with acceptance," musing on heartbreak, sex and purifying catharsis.

DIIV's ZIRP! arrived on Fantasy under unusual circumstances. Zachary Cole Smith wrote it in a period of chaos: welcoming his second child amid fallout from the destruction of his home in the Altadena wildfires. He went into the album, Pitchfork notes, in a spirit of unbridled, determined fun. A. G. Cook, an unlikely producer for the band, buoyed the sessions. The result compacts DIIV's trademark shoegaze (hazy, effects-drenched guitar rock) into nuggets of electro-pop joy — smothering haze coexisting with effervescent hooks that, per Pitchfork, "go down as easily as pop-punk alcopops." That's the review's one simile, and it does the work of two adjectives.

What can a drone producer do with vocalists?

Andy Stott returns with Late Loop on Modern Love, his first album in five years. Pitchfork's advice: close your eyes, breathe, envision the world in slow motion. Stott transformed experimental drone into downtempo trance songs by enlisting vocalists Alison Skidmore and Elaine Howley. Their observations — how pressure leads to escape, or mirrors can extend forever — turn into mantras.

Kali Malone's Burning Song, on Ideologic Organ, carries the week's best backstory. J.S. Bach spent the last 27 years of his life as music director at Thomaskirche, the Lutheran church in Leipzig, Germany. Malone recorded there on two late nights in August, with cellist Lucy Railton and Stephen O'Malley on bowed acoustic guitar. Pitchfork calls the album ruminative, revealing its quiet beauty layer by layer, "like ocean water slowly breaking down rock."

What else made the list?

Four more releases round out Pitchfork's eight, listed without editorial comment:

• Heathers: Awesome (Warner)
• Brat Star: Southern Ontario Gothic (Pre Lapsarian)
• Dream Unending: Certain Uncertainties (20 Buck Spin)
• Lydia Loveless: Accolades (Bloodshot)

All eight are available on Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, Amazon Music, Bandcamp and Rough Trade. Pitchfork notes its picks are independently selected by editors, though affiliate links earn the site a commission. The roundup runs weekly; the newsletter lands every Friday. Listeners wanting the full verdict on Heathers and company will have to wait for the blurbs — or trust their ears.