Album review: Them Crooked Vultures

THEM CROOKED VULTURES: THEM CROOKED VULTURES
***
COLUMBIA, £12.72

HAVE you ever wondered what kind of racket Queens of the Stone Age main man Josh Homme, Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones and Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, if he was back in his Nirvana role as drummer, would make if you stuck them in a room together? This isn't some parlour game of Fantasy Supergroups – the evidence is out there for all to hear, and it goes by the name of Them Crooked Vultures.

How three of rock's most lionised players managed to keep a lid on the news that they had formed a band until their debut gig this summer is a wonder, but we now know that Grohl was the fixer, the man who actually did put together his fantasy supergroup – and made sure he was in it. Jones was at a bit of a loose end anyway, after Robert Plant scuppered plans for a Led Zeppelin reunion, while Josh Homme is no stranger to collaborations, what with the QOTSA revolving door personnel policy and the Desert Sessions – essentially an annual trip into the desert to hang out and play with a different bunch of guest musicians and then release the results.

Although more often associated with the age of the rock dinosaurs, the attraction of the supergroup has never truly died out for the fanboys, and certainly not for musicians. The likes of Audioslave and Velvet Revolver have brought together key rock players in an orgy of mediocrity. Jack White, the master of the 21st century supergroup, has fared a little better. He is now on to his second supergroup, The Dead Weather (featuring Homme's fellow QOTSA member, Dean Fertita). But it's not just Americans in leather trousers who succumb to the vanity of the supergroup. Freebass is the fabled triumvirate of legendary Mancunian bassists Peter Hook, Mani and Andy Rourke, who may one day get round to releasing the music they've been tinkering with for years.

But none of those bands has a member of Led Zeppelin in the line-up. Them Crooked Vultures is a truly heavy duty supergroup – it's practically a super-dupergroup. Their name (though not as bad as Freebass) is a bit too jokey and knowing, as if the trio are pre-empting criticism that they are merely scavenging from rock's carcass. The story goes that the three of them forged their rock beast alliance at Grohl's birthday party, held in a medieval-themed restaurant as knights jousted around them. As an emblem of their super-dupergroup status, they have their own coat of arms and motto – "making the possible totally impossible". Dude.

Their album is only marginally less over the top than this boys' club mentality suggests. Rather than forge a new chemistry, the trio stick to what they know and the result is the inevitable synthesis of three rock'n'roll juggernauts into one powerful retro jam machine. Favouring loose, garagey acoustics, Them Crooked Vultures sounds fun – for the players, mainly. But there's none of the sexy dynamic modernity which Jack White always manages to inject somewhere into his collaborative efforts.

It might have been better if TCV actually had gone way over the top – who else would be capable of challenging Muse for the title of Greatest Band In The Universe? Instead, they open with a riff that is pure Zeppelin…

No-one Loves Me And Neither Do I is dripping in dirty sound and dirty sentiments; Grohl does his best John Bonham impersonation on New Fang. Homme is no Plant-style stratospheric screamer, but a louche, persuasive charmer of a vocalist. At several points on the album, he sounds more like Jack Bruce, one-third of the first supergroup, Cream.

But though it's 40 years on, there's not a whole lot of progress on display here. Scumbag Blues is an outright Zep pastiche, souped up with a bit of rhythm'n'blues organ and Homme's disarming falsetto.

The low-slung yet muscle-flexing Elephants is might for the sake of might, featuring an uncomfortably close-to-home reference to "lumbering giants in a shameful parade, we came to ruin all and make a rotten trade".

It's not that much of a trawl, fortunately. A track such as Bandoliers is enticing enough in itself and there is a late break into less predictable pastures with the Bowiesque strut of Caligulove and the gothic electro funk of Gunman.

But cumulatively, the album feels like getting lost in one sprawling, indulgent jam, where it is possible to rock away absent-mindedly for eight minutes, call the result Warsaw Or The First Breath You Take After You Give Up and consider that a fine day's work.

The main consolation is that, retro or not, these behemoths should sound amazing live, when the Vultures tour next month. But now that we know what a record made by Grohl, Homme and Jones sounds like, can we all go home please?

CRITIC'S CHOICE

Mariachi El Bronx

Oran Mor, Glasgow, Wednesday

LOS Angeles punks The Bronx unleash their mariachi alter egos with Tex-Mex fervour, adding Vincent Hidalgo, son of Los Lobos frontman David Hidalgo, and, most importantly, getting into character by donning some dapper embroidered suits. Arriba!

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