Them Crooked Vultures: "Queens of the Stone Age with less calories"

Grade: 6/10

The idea of a rock super group flourished in the 1980’s until acts like Damn Yankees came and sank the whole lot by putting a whole the size of Texas into the original ideal. The idea was to mix together styles of either the most talented, or the most chaotic, of rockers, crooners and personalities to see if they could successfully coexist and make music. However, when people grew tired of the constant mix-ups and degeneration of quality, the trend quickly became a cliché. All of the work put forth by super groups was instant filler and would soon adorn infomercials for “Monster Ballads”. Hell, even VH1 had a reality show for a super group and it tanked with cement shoes.

Lately, the trend has re-emerged to some interesting success. Jack White, the consummate entrepreneur, revived it by simply jamming with some of his most loved garage-ites and brought both The Raconteurs and Dead Weather to prominence, and mainstream- kick-started the careers of Brendon Benson, The Greenhornes and The Kills, single-handedly. We are, however, not all as enterprising as Jack White, nor do we have the street cred, or veritable rock-god stable of Third Man Records to build such an ideal from ashes. The massive, beard-laden experiment that is Monsters of Folk has also taken the indie-world by storm, to the delight of every college radio listening, harmonica humming Bright Eyes fan and proved that “Monsters can be made of folk-stars”. The supergroup, however, is back in full-effect and has never been more confusing.

Them Crooked Vultures had the potential to be a rock ‘n’ roll demon that would entrance the world and drag it, tooth-and-nail, away from auto-tuners, folk rock and shove a cigarette in the mouth of every teenager alive. What emerged, however, was an aging tribute to a band that has already perfected its craft. Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age, Eagles of Death Metal), Dave Grohl (Nirvana, Foo Fighters, everything that you’ve ever heard) and John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin) had shacked up in a Los Angeles recording studio, doors locked, for months on end. Hype began swirling around the three-headed beast that would emerge from the studio . . . all we got was “Queens of the Stone Age: Light”. It’s like rock n roll, with less calories.

With the release of “New Fang” on November 2, the world tasted what they had thought would be the saving grace of rock n roll; a supremely catchy, loud, riff-laden song with haunting vocals and Dave Grohl beating the living hell out of his drumheads. The only problem was that we, as listeners, couldn’t see through the haze and hype. Once the album dropped on November 17^th, it became very apparent what exactly we were dealing with here: the 80’s supergroup has been reborn instead of the three-headed beast we had all hoped for. The following, free single TrendRobot had advertised, followed up and gave us an exclusive glimpse into the trio’s indulgent personalities; “Mind Eraser, No Chaser” gave us three minutes of wanting to get insanely drunk off of Jager and join a frat.

“Dead End Friends” and “No One Loves Me, and Neither Do I” continue (I kept the album on shuffle to try and mix things up) and lead me to believe that despite some hand-clapping, most songs are indiscernable from one another. TVC’s debut ends up sounding like a veritable mix-tape of Queens of The Stone Age demos preceding 2000’s Rated R. Granted, Rated R was a coming of age for QOTSA, so hopefully, if this supergroup thing continues, there’s still some hope.

In the age of failing record giants, it seemed that the DIY route that bands choose leads to a rebirth of the underground movement that spurred amazing rock n roll, punk rock and heavy metal. Hype and great music, however, don’t always go hand-in-hand as we can apparently see from TCV. Perhaps the problem doesn’t lie within the album though . . . it’s in dealing with the fact that our rock Gods are actually aging . . . and still trying to find someone to jam with and do copious amounts of drugs.