Them Crooked Vultures – A Retrospective
About a year ago and some change, I was in the biggest rut of my life. I was working a dead end job in an area of town I hated with all the anger my soul could bear. I was in a dead end relationship that I couldn’t get outside of long enough to breath. I felt disconnected to everything real and truthful in this world. I had lost my self.
Two things happened to start my transition from boy to man. First, I fell in love. Of course, being the devout intellectual I had become, I had no idea.
Second, three of my favorite musicians of all time decided it would be a good time to get together in a studio, jam, and record what came out. The result was Them Crooked Vultures.
Them Crooked Vultures is a tough album to wrap your head around. The weight of expectation kept most people who reviewed it at the time too focused on the legacy of all the musicians involved to actually LISTEN and hear what the album itself had to say. You just don’t get the most talented, experienced rock musicians alive to record an album and have something without substance or meaning. I knew there was a code there to be cracked. So I set out to crack it.
First, I bugged the living hell out of everyone I knew to listen to it. Then, I started drumming to it. That turned into literally hundreds of hours spent on anything I could beat with sticks figuring out every nook and cranny the album had to offer. I would play the album from start to finish day after day, time after time, like a man possessed. Just ask my ex-girlfriend. Bless her soul, she dealt with the worst of it.
I never really sat down and listened to it though. Of course, I listened to it, but not in a dark room with just me and the headphones. I wasn’t ready to do that. Most important things in life are rarely that easy to sit with. At the time, I couldn’t even sit still with myself in a dark room. That’s just how it is.
So, onward I played. I watched every single live video that hit Youtube, which turned out to be quite a bit since they toured extensively on the album around the world for several months. I watched over, and over, and over, and over again. I never stopped paying attention. I didn’t know why I wasn’t already tired of the same damn songs, but I wasn’t. I’m still not. Some music is just too important. Emotions are tricky like that.
Now, a year later, I finally get it.
In simplest form, Them Crooked Vultures is a blues album. It combines the elements of all great blues albums, as Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, and Queens of the Stone Age/Kyuss did in decades past. It has stories of lust. It has stories of falling in and out of love, and the toxicity of a relationship gone cold. It tells stories of being a good man in a world that only wants to use your gift of compassion for her own selfish ends. It gives a blueprint to get out of a rut and get back in touch with yourself.
When I realized what I had been hearing, but not feeling, for so long, it was like an oily film had been lifted from my face. I could breath again, see again, hear again, smell again, touch again, FEEL again. I had my groove back. I was unstoppable. The lion had awoken from his slumber. The reckoning was at hand.
Did John Paul Jones, Dave Grohl, and Josh Homme plan this when they went into the studio? Did they know that they were crafting the tool and blueprint for a man to find himself? Hell no, they didn’t. They had experience, tons of mutual respect and love, and the joy of playing in the moment and putting it all together later. The best music doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and it isn’t pre-planned. It happens when a group of people have such intense chemistry that the intellectual process would only dampen their gifts.
I get that now.
There are three types of people in this world. Lovers, cowards, and those who have found balance in between and use both their love and their fear to navigate their lives with heads held straight towards the sky.
I know who I am.
Who the @$*! are you?
Do you have the guts to know the truth?
Namaste.
Doomsday Rock
My apologies for the absence. I’m back now, with some new grooves to share.
First up is the Melvins. The Melvins have been around for about 20-25 years now and were fresh on the scene when Nirvana was just picking up Dave Grohl. In fact, The Melvins brought Kurt Cobain to a show Grohl was playing in, leading to their eventual acquisition of the drummer.
The Melvins are no Nirvana, however. Their brand of music is decidedly heavier, with a larger wall of sound that points to grind and other heavy metal, without the yowling and fast tempos. This is music with which to conduct a funeral dirge.
Enjoy. Fun trivia time: They are very fond of recording and performing with two different drummers and drum kits at the same time. The polyrhythmic layering adds a tribal pulse and stuttering technicality to already thunderous songs.
Speaking of…
… Minus the Bear, here’s a recent one from their just released album OMNI. It’s one of my favorite from the album and features a very bright, summery vibe and more pleasantly melodic vocals from Jake.
Enjoy. It’s a nice ray of sunshine on an otherwise dreary Richmond afternoon.
Blue Ridge Mountains.
I’m back and freshened up from an incredible camping trip in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Today’s pick is called then, fittingly, Blue Ridge Mountains. The song is by the bearded folk group Fleet Foxes. They are one of my favorite bands currently, due to the incredible harmonies and natural imagery they create in each song.
The Suburbs
As is the norm for Arcade Fire, their new track is laced with dark mood and melancholy, despite being an overall poppier track than they’ve done so far. Regardless, its a toe tapping track that features a great hook during the chorus. Enjoy and look forward to their new album; I know I am.
Anecdote
This cut is from the band Ambulance LTD, a kind of pop-rock/alternative band with really lush sounds and strong melodies. They have been out of the scene for several years now. The song is called “Anecdote” and it’s an anthem for any jilted lover dealing with a selfish or narcissistic ex.
I enjoy the sense of bitter wistfulness the track imparts. It’s an appropriate soundtrack to a long country drive stuck in the backseat. Try it sometime.
“’cause you, like to believe, that all that love is free
oh, someone like you, will never be lonely, or not get blue,
but darlin’, it’s not true”
Not Fade Away.
I often wonder what music would sound like had Buddy Holly not put his own vocal hiccup on the world.
Here’s the album cut of Not Fade Away, which was, inronically enough, the last song Buddy Holly ever played live.
Holly and “Crickets” drummer Jerry Allison were famous for innovating percussion sounds to get a different feel in their songs. On the track Peggy Sue, Allison plays a nearly constant paradiddle on the toms, in Everyday, he plays a percussion beat with his hands and pant legs, here in Not Fade Away, Allison is actually drumming on a cardboard box.
This song was penned in the “hambone” rhythm that Bo Diddley had made famous. It also features Holly’s patented vocal hiccup, that Elvis would eventually borrow and make famous in his own way.
The Sadies
I remember a time when I wouldn’t listen to anything that remotely resembled country; now, I’m changing my tune considerably. Enter Exhibit A, The Sadies. Based out of Ontario, Canada, The Sadies combine a distinct country sound with the driving elements of rock and shades of psychedelia.
You can hear touches of Johnny Cash in cuts like “The Swagger” and any number of folk-rock bands in the following clip. This is the kind of music to barbeque with friends to, or relax to with a bottle of Jack. Or start a fight. Your pick.
To hear more, visit the band’s MySpace page or learn more from their entry in Wikipedia.
Our Lady of Perpetual Tone 