Asif Khan Inc.

Them Crooked Vultures – Them Crooked Vultures

Vultures aren’t what your exact image of a predator would be. At best, you would tend to view them as a somewhat aging and beaten up distant relative of the more dangerous raptors. They would not swoop down for their kill. They would rather contentedly chomp on the remains of the kill at leisure. You might be wondering about the reason behind this seemingly superficial discourse on ornithological evolution. Can’t really blame us – after all, if three rockstars name their collective act as “Them Crooked Vultures”, there are bound to be questions ringing in your heads. John Paul Jones, Dave Grohl and Josh Homme. Super super stars in their own right, and each of them inarguably defining an era when the material they spewed from their records created musical history. John Paul Jones may have been the quietest and the most under-rated member of Led Zeppelin, but that’s probably because he let his bass strings do the talking. And not just the bass, he possessed the rare quality of being a multi-instrumentalist extraordinaire, which he displayed with élan on various Led Zep compositions. Similar was the dilemma of Dave Grohl, who got eclipsed by the presence of Cobain. Post Nirvana, it seems he acquired ‘moksha’ too, proving his mettle on Foo Fighters and Probot. The only one who has most certainly been part of the limelight in all his ventures is Josh Homme. With his brand of stoner laced psychedelic rock, he turned Queens of the Stone Age into a voice which bought that hard hitting punch into rock and roll the way it was always supposed to be. The self titled debut album of Them Crooked Vultures promises to be exactly that. We are closing towards the end of this year, so we think we can safely call this one of the best ones to have come out this year. With its tasteful pummelling tones, TCV has the capacity to pulverize your senses. Yet leave it pleasantly relieved. The self deprecatingly titled “No One Loves Me & Neither Do I” immediately harkens you back to an era in rock and roll which has long since been taken over by synthetic melodies and Autotune vocal tweaks. Heavy, hard hitting and not exactly verbose, this is rock and roll delivered on a platter which was readied on the anvil of virtuosity. The mood laden slides of the guitar sway you throughout the album. And just when you felt you had gotten yourself lost amongst the groove of Jones and Homme, Grohl brings you back to senses with his acerbic treatment of the skins. Variations, diversions and transgressions – these are ingredients which are found in abundance throughout most of the tracks. The gradual progression with which “Elephants” builds up into a screaming crescendo peaking for a four minutes of the track, and then slowly glides down could serve as one of the best exemplification of this sort. The ditsy cymbal led opener on the lead single “New Fang” possesses, just like its name, a sting which injects new found venom. Though we couldn’t really make out much about why Homme is talking about ‘breaking fingers’. Lyrical prowess isn’t really expected here either. As long as there are enough jabs like the harmonically inclined blues driven “Scumbag Blues”, you wouldn’t really care about words anyway. Which is found in plenty on “Bandoliers” or the distorted “Warsaw Or The First Breath You Take”. Come on, even the oddly spaced out “Interlude with the Ludes” doesn’t seem incongruous amongst the heavyweight tracks it is surrounded by. It rather serves as a breather, before you are set back in motion by the “Gunman”. Jones doesn’t need to prove himself. But he does emerge in his own quiet way as the big daddy of the band when he exudes texture with his slide guitar on “Reptiles” and the clavinet on “Scumbag Blues”. Understandably, the temptation would have been too hard to resist. They may have already made victims of us in their previous avatars as birds of prey, and swept down upon unsuspecting prey in the years gone by. And though some might say they have aged, they still contain that glint in the corner of their eyes which shows that natural instinct they possess. Only this time around, the victims are more than willing to be devoured by them.