67: Them Crooked Vultures – Self Titled

Them Crooked Vultures via Amazon

I know Them Crooked Vultures' self titled debut (2009) is new but I know an important album when I hear it. This album is very important. Now let's forget for a few minutes that I have a completely straight non-stalker middle-aged fan-boy man-crush on Dave Grohl. Let's also forget that if I had Queens of the Stone Age albums when I grew up, my Winnie the Pooh record player would have completely melted into a pile of steamy poo, pun and all.

Them Crooked Vultures is probably the best rock album of 2009 and one of the best of the whole decade. I say this as a rock historian and founder of my own School of Rock, which you are attending right now. So what I say goes regardless of any hyperbole you perceive.

Right now as my ears are surrounded by Them Crooked Vultures' greatness, I hark back to a better time, a golden time of rock, if you will. This album goes back to rock fundamentals when people knew the meaning of properly breaking a guitar on stage or completely destroying a hotel room just because they were there. This was a time when rock hadn't sold out to The Man; it more or less sublet some space to him.

To put it another way, the album is raw rock as I like it, but that only takes up one line and I want to make sure you get your money's worth from today's lesson.

(Note below that I've linked to some metalsucks.net articles related to Them Crooked Vultures even though their apparent editorial stance is that TCV is boring. I respectfully disagree with them only because I know metal snobbery when I read it. My mom used to tell me that people would make fun of me because they were jealous. And in a way, aren't we all jealous of Dave Grohl?)