6 Music - Music News

Having pulverised crowds from Blackpool to Glastonbury, it felt almost overdue for a band with the regal pedigrees of Them Crooked Vultures to grace the rarefied surroundings of the Royal Albert Hall.

The thoroughbred supergroup of Dave Grohl, Josh Homme and John Paul Jones kicked off the Teenage Cancer Trust’s annual eight-night run of with the heaviest music to echo around the hallowed Hall since Jones came here with Led Zeppelin.

“There’s a list of the legendary venues that you cross your fingers and some day hope you’ll be able to play,” Grohl told 6 Music news beforehand.

“This is definitely one of them. This might be at he top of the list.”

Dave Grohl’s not wrong to also suggest that even the most sceptical audiences experience a lapse of jaw control on seeing this quartet perform together for the first time, and supergroups are undoubtedly built for the big occasion.

Buckling down, there was scarcely a sign of Homme’s usual swagger or Grohl’s boyish sense of humour for the first song and a half.

The first glimpse came as the volley of riffs and drum rolls finally relented in the breakdown of Dead End Friends, allowing the crowd to swap nods for smiles and for Homme to corral some more outward displays of audience enthusiasm.

"One can’t help wondering whether stages like this would be a fitting moment to wrap up this round of solos."

But Them Crooked Vultures are no rabble rousers in the vein of a band like Kasabian – who played the same stage almost exactly a year ago – and their sonic pummelling frequently felt more like a showcase than a participatory experience.

That’s not to suggest, of course, that anyone who’s ever been a fan of any of the members’ constituent bands would object to a showcase of such staggeringly taut rock.

The chemistry between the band’s members is so undeniable – together they seem a perfect choice to expose the home of the Proms to rock music that delights in polishing its own jagged edges.

One need only witness the brilliance of twin harmonic solos in Scumbag Blues, Grohl’s astonishing rhythm changes or Alain Johannes casually employing four-finger neck picking for a desert blues vignette mid-set to realise that.

The only thing conceivably left in the tank was an encore, but with several songs clocking in well over the five minute mark the set list felt sufficiently muscular.

Crowds have gladly let Them Crooked Vultures get away with more than their fare share of magnum opuses and peculiar moments (like Homme’s cabaret-esque vocals in Interlude w/ Ludes) in the past year, and as yet the novelty factor remains untarnished. It would be a shame to see even a speck of that chipped away through repetition.

Now we’re seven months and an album on from the initial impact of such an imagination-capturing musical experiment, one can’t help wondering whether stages like this would be a fitting moment to wrap up this round of solos, however impressive they are.

But for a date with Download festival in June, their Coachella festival slot next month would seem like an obvious time for the band to take a pause, a mere 20 miles from their Joshua Tree nest (as the vulture flies, of course).

That’s not to write the epitaph of Them Crooked Vultures either - if the talent of its members is proven by anything, it’s the way in which their musical projects have evolved so impressively over time.

More Grohl, Homme, Johannes and Jones please, just maybe not more of the same.

Set List:
Nobody Loves Me
Dead End Friends
Scumbag Blues
Elephants
Highway 1
New Fang
Gun Man
Bandoliers
Mind Eraser
Caligulove
Interlude w/ Ludes
Daffodils
Reptiles
Warsaw