I feel like I’m late to the party for not checking out Them Crooked Vultures until this weekend. The album’s only been out a month, so it’s not like I’ve been sleeping on the job, but people are buzzing about them and I really truly could have been first out the gate on this one.
I’ve got a friend whose taste in music is unimpeachable but nevertheless doesn’t quite line up with my own. He trends toward metal, and I don’t know anything about that shit — I still listen to Faith No More for fuck’s sake — but it seems like he knows what’s good and what sucks. I trust him on these things. He’s had promo art for Them Crooked Vultures as his laptop background for six weeks now, and he’d talk about how the band is awesome and blah blah blah. I didn’t listen. I figured it was just another metal band I’d never have time to listen to, something else that guy likes. WRONG. Wrong wrong wrong. It is awesome. It is awesome and you will like it.
First of all, it’s a supergroup. I know what you’re thinking: “When’s the last time a supergroup worked out?” All the fucking time, that’s when. Matter fact, this is a compound supergroup. You got Dave Grohl, of Nirvana and the Foo Fighters, obviously, but he was also in Killing Joke for awhile, which counts if you ask me. Then you’ve got Josh Homme of Kyuss and Queens of the Stone Age. QotSA was itself a supergroup: look it up if you don’t believe me. Then you got John Paul Jones of Led Motherfucking Zepplin. The upper echelon of rock is as fluid as the bottom, it seems. If you’re a no-talent sleazeball in Frog Balls, Arkansas or a multi-Grammy session guitarist, you can slut around with any band on your tier, no problem. There’s a thousand-mile climb between those two points, but you have to admit they share a common feature.
Of course, naming people and bands and peppering in a few curse words doesn’t make a review. But I’m not really trying to do a review here. They’re on Interscope and their tour sold out and it’s a supergroup. There’s mad reviews out there about them. And hey, spoiler alert: they all say it’s good. And it is. All I’m doing here is giving them the Too Much Happiness seal of approval. We’re some fucking tastemakers over here. If you were waiting to see if I liked it before you gave it a listen, well, wait no longer.
All I’ll say is that it’s kind of prog. I immediately regret saying that, because it’s not really true and it will instantly turn a lot of you off. I said Grizzly Bear was prog too, and it pissed people off. It’s not prog. It is complex, though. There are some creative chord progressions and time signatures, some very interesting creative choices. There aren’t any obvious singles. It’s basically three talented guys trying to impress each other. It’s not posture and it’s not a product, it’s straight-up music. This is highbrow hard rock, and I really like that. I think it’s a sign of sophistication for a rock album to do really well despite being . . . arty. The masses might be getting smarter. Or at the least, the people the masses pay attention to are getting smarter. I’m fine with it either way.
Them Crooked Vultures – “Dead End Friends”
Them Crooked Vultures – “Caligulove”
Them Crooked Vultures – “No One Loves Me and Neither Do I”
Browse Timeline
Comments ( 1 Comment )
Ashli-Maryah Triplett added these pithy words on Dec 23 09 at 2:59 pmSo usually I’m not to keen on checking out new bands unless I get a “good vibe”, I know I’m nuts. I am big zep fan & you menchined John Paul Jones and I was like whatTHEfuck. How could I not have listened to these guys! Thanks for the motiviation to not be a prissy bitch about my music (at least this time).
