Them Crooked Vultures - S/T (2009)

Late 2009: time for those silly moments when you think about the best album of the year (or of the decade which is about to end)… I know, it’s just a game and you always end up forgetting about some good record you listened to in February and have to change the chart over and over again... Well no doubt this year the record that thrilled me the most is Them Crooked Vultures’ self-titled debut. For those who still don’t know who they are I’d just mention those three names: John Paul Jones, Dave Grohl, Joshua Homme. I’ve been hating the idea of super-groups probably since the eighties, when all the classic bands split up and started forming new bands, switching names and band members like we now change jobs. And what about Zwan in more recent times? Ugh. This record has been on my mp3 player for weeks; in the meantime I’ve changed playlists and added more albums but I keep going back to this one and listen to it non-stop. And I publicly want to thank Mr. Robert Plant for dumping his old mates after that single reunion gig because otherwise JPJ would have been too busy with that Led Zeppelin reunion and we wouldn’t be listening to this phenomenal record. I guess the perspective of touring with Alison Krauss is more attracting than joining two old mates and Bonzo’s kid for months playing the same old stuff. Anyway, some might say this is the record Led Zep’s could have made had they entered the 80’s wanting to kick some ass (and had John Bonham not died of course). Their final album was running in all directions, on occasions foolishly, but featured a few epics like In the Evening and Carouselambra that showed what they were still able to build after the sonic assault of Presence. Them Crooked Vultures is obviously indebted to mid-to-late seventies Zeppelin but instead of the sometimes boring tones of Plant’s voice we get the more subtle Homme’s endeavors which take you to a whole different planet. You may say I’m obsessed with King Crimson comparisons but his vocals sound a lot like Adrian Belew’s and some titles like Elephants (an homage to Elephant Talk?) and New Fang would be perfect for 1981’s Discipline. I won’t even start on the musicianship of these three guys, it would be trite… But they sound like they’ve been playing together for years now this could also be Queens of the Stone Age’s best album and the best project Dave has been in since the end of Nirvana. Another long one, the sumptuous Bandoliers, has a Spanish theme and a short insert of synths in the instrumental part which rend it very grandiose. Scumbag Blues is Psychokiller meets Trampled Underfoot: the clavinet is used sparingly in this case but when it enters it’s proved to give you goose-bumps. Warsaw or the First Breath You Take after You Give Up is definitely closer to QOTSA’s style with its long psychedelic rambling. If Stoner derives from Black Sabbath, than this is really the perfect meeting between the darker side of the Birmingham band and the more eclectic side of hard rock by the Zep, replacing certain sexist overtones of the past with some pure 90’s nihilism…

Like Rats

A few months back I downloaded a demo from a band called Like Rats. the band came to my knowledge from an entry on the excellent blog Invisible Oranges. I don't think I could describe the band much better than Mr. Lee does so here's an excerpt:

"Have you ever wondered what Celtic Frost would sound like as a hardcore punk band? Me neither. The idea of replacing Tom G. Warrior's beanie with a cadet cap is ludicrous. But Chicago's Like Rats have gone ahead and done it — and the results are tasty. ... The integration of Celtic Frost into a hardcore punk context is so seamless that the genre's clichés fall away. The raspy vocals are a perfect midpoint between hardcore and black metal. This isn't the hardcore punk of breakdowns and karate dances; it has more of an anything-goes '80s vibe."



This demo has seriously grown on me and I cannot stop listening to it. The best news is you can download the demo for free from the bands website.

On a side note, Invisible Oranges is on of the best music blogs I've come across. I check it daily and I really enjoy the writing, most of it's done by Cosmo Lee who writes for my favorite rag (Decible) as well as some other fine publications. Check it out.

Masters of Reality - Pine/Cross Dover

I’ve been a Masters of Reality fan since I was 15, right after I got their “warhorse” Domino (from the first, self-titled album) on one of my many cassette tape compilations; that was late 1988 and I used to record random rock songs from any Italian radio station. Back then, with no internet, there was no way of knowing who these mysterious Americans were. All I knew about them I learnt from short columns on rock magazines and that was it. By the time I managed to buy their debut masterpiece a few months later the original line up had split! I was hooked on 70’s rock at the time and to hear that one of the few “new” bands I liked was already gone was a huge disappointment to me. Of course their name comes from the title of Black Sabbath’s third album, which I loved (and still love). I could hear the influence of Toni Iommi’s band on MOR but there was much more, the ghosts of Led Zeppelin and Cream, some early stoner, psychedelia, The Beatles’ White album weirdness, the epic of Blue Garden and the grandiose finale of Kill the King… There was no other band like them around that time. Then I kind of lost their tracks. In the meantime they became Chris Goss’s project, his vehicle for music more than a actual band; with a revolving door policy, they released a bunch of good albums, especially the follow up “Sunrise on the sufferbus” which saw Ginger Baker join them although temporarily. They’ve always managed to sound noir even on apparently easy pieces. Chris Goss’ voice can be intense and measured at the same time: his good pal Josh Homme must have learnt a thing or two from their friendship. Cross/Pine Dover is the latest chapter in this saga. The starting riff of King Richard TLH sounds like it was culled directly from The Undertones’ Teenage Kicks just to become another one of their epic tracks sustained by a motorik rhythm. Closing Alfalfa is a trippy instrumental with a West-coast feel, a Can-meet-Quicksilver Messenger Service style experiment in a way. In-between is Chris Goss spectrum of moods, from the other instrumental, Johnny’s dream, which he admits being a nod to John McLaughlin (but to me it sounds like early King Crimson’s experimental side), the creepy Absinthe Jim And Me, the dark and hypnotic Worm in the silk with its excerpt from Glenn Miller’s Moonlight Serenade, the catchy Dreamtime Stomp. But taken as a whole this is an excellent record from an often undervalued cult band. Yes, there are references to other bands like I said but oftentimes you need genius to put it all together and achieve an optimal result like this.