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…