Gig review: Them Crooked Vultures

Published on Wednesday 16 December 2009 18:10

THEM CROOKED VULTURES **** CORN EXCHANGE, EDINBURGH

BY RIGHTS, a supergroup featuring Queens of the Stone Age's Josh Homme on vocals and guitar, Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl on drums and Led Zeppelin's John Paul Jones on bass should be one of the most massive rock experiences imaginable. Yet Them Crooked Vultures' self-titled debut album has received middling reviews and sales – can a live show featuring these three rock titans (and sometime Queens of the Stone Age collaborator Alain Johannes on rhythm guitar) redeem the whole project? On this evidence, the answer is "yes and no".

The fact is that many of TCV's songs simply aren't all that great. Sounding like average QOTSA bolstered by a really good rhythm section, Caligulove and Spinning in Daffodils plodded along, while Interlude with Ludes was a baffling psychedelic anomaly, made all the weirder by a cigarette-puffing Homme telling the audience to feel free to "go f***ing crazy" beforehand.

For all the less exciting passages, though, the best parts of the set were truly humbling. Homme's seedy croon is suited to the grinding rock of tracks like Dead End Friends, Scumbag Blues, Mind Eraser No Chaser and Reptiles, while Grohl's drums and Jones's bass (and, in order, keyboard, keytar, 12-string guitar and backing vocals) were thunderous when unleashed. The lengthy instrumental finale of Warsaw or The Last Breath You Take Before You Give Up – itself the closing song of a more than hundred-minute set – illustrated just why a show as imperfect as this can still be unmissable.