Them Crooked Vultures
Them Crooked Vultures

Little, big premise: “Them Crooked Vultures” is not the latest album by Queens Of The Stone Age

(from now on, simply Q.O.T.S.A.).

Thus, those expecting a new “Songs For The Deaf” will be disappointed, while those expecting a dull copy of “Era Vulgaris” will be doing somersaults with triple twists.

Let's go in order: TCV is a supergroup (hard?) rock formed in July 2009, composed of the old fox Josh Homme, singer and guitarist (QOTSA, Kyuss) and occasionally drummer (Eagles Of Death Metal), supported on drums by the trusty Dave Grohl (formerly QOTSA, Foo Fighters, Nirvana), and by His Majesty John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin) on bass. Excited for the studio debut?

The first part of the album flows smoothly and beautifully: although innovation and psychedelia are unjustifiably absent, the start is as electrifying as it is immediate, and can be listened to with disarming fluidity.

The opener “No One Loves Me & Neither Do I” reminds us that Grohl still knows what he's doing on drums (and thus the melancholic illness of Foo Fighters isn't contagious), surprising us with a powerful and mighty ride that only Homme's clever singing manages to interrupt.

It continues by cleverly winking at the Eagles Of Death Metal (“Mind Eraser No Chaser”) and with the slap-in-the-face of “New Fang”, a direct and potential single: it’s only Rock and Roll, everything seems to be in the right place at the right time (“Dead End Friends”).

Sure, nothing that makes you jump out of your seat, but without realizing it, our foot taps along.

The foot that will then be caught off guard by “Elephant”, a serene sky after lightning, which with a chorus halfway between reflective and dreamy, dampens a relentless crescendo of guitar and drums. It is followed by “Scumbag Blues”, one of the most convincing moments of the work, an intense and enveloping carpet of riffs hand in hand with excellent bass work and pounding drums. We're at the turning point.

Although “Bandoliers” and the following “Reptiles”, while very pleasant, do not make a miracle cry, the record almost seems to change skin in the final part: suddenly the rhythms slow down, the sounds become more expansive, the atmosphere mysteriously hypnotic and unsettling.

The pair formed by the epic “Warsaw Or The First Breath You Take After You Give Up” and the captivating “Caligulove”, (preceded by “Interlude With Ludes”) is indeed, in the opinion of the writer, the most inspired of the bunch:

the first is according to Rolling Stone a sort of tribute to The Doors of 8 minutes that degenerates into an irreverent march; the second a sensual and irreverent hymn to love guided by Jones’s keyboards and Homme's falsetto, which leaves us wickedly to the questionable “Gunman” and the sly “Spinning in Daffodis”, a worthy conclusion to the work.

In conclusion, “Them Crooked Vultures” is tangible evidence that Homme, to regain some of the lost desire to compose music, should have set aside the QOTSA brand and his accomplices for a while.

It won't be the album of the year, but it's a great rock opera full of interesting cues, played by great and seasoned musicians, which if less verbose in some parts, would have earned four merit stars on the chest. As it is, it's an album worth three and a half, rounded down due to the high percentage of hype that a project of this kind naturally carries with it.

The student applies but could do more.