Music Review: Them Crooked Vultures, “S/T”

Rating: 85

Despite British punk’s initial impulse to kill Led Zeppelin and its ilk, so many American teenagers, especially those who grew up knowing Zeppelin mostly after its active reign ended, took both sides as articles of faith. Whether it was Dave Grohl bashing out rhythms in Washington, D.C., punk bands before moving to Seattle and joining Nirvana, or Josh Homme perfecting “stoner rock” in the California desert, John Bonham’s boom-bash and Jimmy Page’s elegant riffology were never far from either lad’s playing. Now conspiring with the third element of Zeppelin’s instrumental triumvirate, bassist John Paul Jones, they are Them Crooked Vultures.

It makes perfect sense that this self-titled disc often sounds like Foo Fighters or, more pointedly, Queens of the Stone Age’s “Songs for the Deaf,” which featured both Grohl and Homme (especially Them Vultures’ first single, “New Fang”), but Zeppelin sneaks in early and often. Witness the 2:45 mark in the opening “No One Loves Me & Neither Do I” coming after an inside-out dirty boogie, the song crashes into the Misty Mountains — this is Jones playing like he did on “Black Dog,” bass-as-driver, and it’s monstrous.

But Them Crooked Vultures are extrapolating from Zeppelin’s ethos 30 years after “In Through the Out Door,” not copying and splicing best bits. While “Elephants” is a seven-minute assembly of Homme’s guitar heroics, it sprawls on its own merits, and Homme’s falsetto on “Scumbag Blues” evokes Cream, not Zep, even when Jones breaks out a Clavinet line that faintly echoes “Trampled Under Foot.” With the exception of Cream and Zeppelin, most supergroups work better on spreadsheets than on record, but Them Crooked Vultures does not sound as dismissible as three rich players pooling their musical wealth. This is worth leaving day jobs.

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