Them Crooked Vultures Fail To Deliver

Sound Academy

Toronto, ON

on Oct 9 2009

Shehzaad Jiwani (CHARTattack)

10/14/2009 1:43pm

Full disclosure: I worship Dave Grohl and Josh Homme. These guys are automatically included any fantasy band I dream up in my head, and I have gone on record defending some of their less than noble musical outings. No one could have been more excited to see these two musicians — along with fucking John Paul Jones — than I was.

Yet, even with this overwhelming bias, the Toronto debut of Them Crooked Vultures — the supergroup to end all supergroups — was disappointing to say the least. Add to this the high ticket prices, the dismal weather and the absolute worst venue in the city, and the evening was an all around flop.

Let's start with the songs. Considering no one has heard more than five full minutes of music from this band, the entire night was like a big listening party. No one really knew what to expect, and that level of mystery is commendable in a day and age when you can download a band's entire back catalogue in a couple of minutes.

However, the music hardly deserves any level of secrecy. It sounds exactly like a band comprised of Homme, Grohl and Jones would sound like. Or, more accurately, it sounds like a group comprised of a few dudes who really like those guys, yet don't have the musical chops to write songs anywhere near as good as their respective idols.

The fact that each song basically repeated its knuckleheaded riff ad nauseum didn't help. Halfway through, I looked at a friend of mine and asked if it was the same song they were playing five minutes prior. Turns out it was. Not a good sign.

So, the tunes sucked, but wasn't it still cool to see three of rock's brightest stars on stage at the same time? Well, yes, at first, but the novelty of this wore off after about 10 minutes — which was apparently true for others who saw fit to watch the terrible screen projection of the show rather than the actual stage. Why anyone would pay $60 to watch the equivalent of a YouTube video? (A quick note to the videographer: Lay off the superimpose feature. Try to make the video look more like a rock concert and not a Rush video from the '80s.)

It didn't help that the musicians displayed no on-stage chemistry or energy whatsoever. If you closed your eyes it could have been anybody up there. Grohl's drumming was boring and uninspired, Jones' basslines barely showed vital signs and Homme's down-tuned riffs all sounded like QOTSA filler that didn't make the cut of his studio albums. The only person that looked interested in being there was Alain Johannes, who added some much needed guitar muscle to the proceedings, but little else.

On the one hand, it's nice to see guys at their level keep their heads down and just play some tunes without drawing attention to the fact that they're universally acclaimed superstars. However, when they make zero effort to engage the crowd, it almost makes you sympathetic to Velvet Revolver or Audioslave — at least they made it look like they had something to prove. Them Crooked Vultures just didn't seem to care.

All this would have been acceptable if it wasn't such a spectacle. If this had been a well kept secret show at a small venue with reasonable ticket prices, the mediocre music and lack of enthusiasm on display would have been much easier to swallow. But drawing so much attention to themselves and not delivering on any conceivable level is just inexcusable.