Them Crooked Vultures

Hype is a powerful thing. It can make people like Susan Boyle become one of the best selling artists ever overnight and Cheryl Cole a superstar. It is a thing to be skeptical of as quality usually fails to follow. And there is much hype indeed behind Them Crooked Vultures. There’s just the issue of whether there’s the substance or not to address.

Them Crooked Vultures, the new star studded group containing Josh Homme (Queens Of The Stone Age), Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters) and John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin) has been everywhere of late with free tracks peppering the internet and surprise supports slots to the Arctic Monkeys. They’ve let you know they exist (even if their managers didn’t until after the album was finished) and they are here to show you how it’s done.

And to their credit, they have managed to follow the build up with an actually decent record. What fisrt started out as the latest ‘Desert Sessions‘ (Homme jamming in the desert with whoever he feels like) soon grew into a monster. Instead of loose garage tracks we find streamlined rock tunes, set to kill.

This undoubtedly Homme’s baby, his pop-stoner rock combo sound is his greatest blessing and his biggest curse. Wherever he goes, he leaves his stamp all over it. Meaning, for better or worse, this sounds very much like QOTSA.

The Opening tracks spread over the internet before the proper release reek of pure Queens of the stone age; Hommes dead pan lyrics and crunchy guitar work making this sound like the album they should have made after ‘Lullabies to Paralyze‘. ‘Dead End Friends‘ has the quality to be the next single, while the lengthy ‘Elephants‘ sounds like a cross between The Arctic Monkey’s ‘Crying Lightning‘ if it came from ‘Rated R.’

Grohl’s powerhouse drumming is as quality as it ever was throughout the whole record, no other man can be so adored from behind the kit as him. While Jone’s influence seems sparse apart from the Zeppelin sounding ‘Scumbag Blues‘, one of the album’s highlights.

‘Interludes with Ludes‘ is Homme’s attempt at Beatles psychedelia and works, even if it shouldn’t on paper. ‘Warsaw Or The First Breath You Take After You Give Up‘ is as long as the name but nowhere near as interesting, the only really bad track on a very good album. The rest is Homme by numbers but at a quality that he hasn’t spewed out in years. ‘Reptiles‘, ‘Gunman‘ and ‘Spinning In Daffodils‘ rock hard and are an enjoyable listen.

This is no ‘Songs For The Deaf‘, ‘Nevermind‘ or ‘Led Zep 4‘, but this is a solid album. And all respect to a group of rock idols bringing classic hard rock to the masses not because they have to, but because they can. Sometimes the hype really is worth listening to.