Them Crooked Vultures – Festival Hall

Let’s pretend.

Last week I hired a DVD from my local store. It was the full first season of True Blood, but that’s not important. When I opened the DVD up I was surprised to see a Ticketmaster concert ticket fall out. Actually two fell out, but one of them had been torn in half and it looked like the other half might have been used for a filter on a joint. I’m not sure what made me think that but I just did.

Anyway, I thought that maybe the previous hirer of the DVD might have accidentally left the concert ticket in the DVD case, and seeing as it was for a concert that hadn’t happened yet I thought I should try to find out who it belonged to. So I called the video store. The dude at the store wasn’t too keen on going into the computer to try and trace the history of the rental (he said something about The Privacy Act) so he suggested that maybe I should just keep the ticket.

“Who’s it for”, he asked.

I picked up the ticket and read “ Them Crooked Vultures, Festival Hall, Jan 23”

“Aw man, you so should keep it”, said the dude.

Anyway January 23rd rolled around and I found myself at a loose end. I remembered the ticket. It was priced at $103, so it seemed a waste for it to go unused. So I thought “what the hell”, I’d go and see the show – it would be interesting to see a band without knowing who they were or what their background was or having heard any of their hits. Assuming they had hits.

Plus it would be nostalgic to go and see a concert at Festival Hall.

I have a theory that you can judge a band by the t-shirts their audience wears.

The first ten t-shirts I saw upon arriving at the show were as follows : White Stripes, Hawkwind, Helmet, Foo Fighters, Guns N’ Roses, Tool, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Rage Against The Machine, Queens of The Stone Age.

Leaving aside the Dylan shirt I think it was fair to assume that Them Crooked Vultures were a rock band.

I was right – but they weren’t just a rock band, they turned out to be a really great rock band.

There wasn’t  a bad song all night – I assumed that they must have had quite a few albums because they appeared to have a lot of material to chose from. But at one stage the lead singer introduced a song called Highway One saying “this ones not on the record”. I asked the bloke next to me, who was wearing a Queen t-shirt, “how many albums do these guys have”. He looked at me kinda strange. “Just one, unless you count their other bands” he smirked.
So Them Crooked Vultures played for almost an hour and a half and the crowd loved every second of it. They are a strange looking quartet. The lead singer doesn’t look like a rock star at all, in fact he looks more like a ex-footballer. But he’s a fantastic singer who mixes powerful vocal moments in with some remarkably pure falsetto singing and some mannered vocal work that reminded me of Gary Numan (strangely enough).  He was really interesting and his guitar playing which he shared with the second guitarist was really versatile and high quality. He played like a stadium rock guitarist trading in big riffs at some moments and then he’d offer up some very clever prog-rock kinda soloing in others. The Hawkwind t-shirt bloke was into it.

The other guitarist, who also played some keyboards didn’t seem to get as big a reaction from the audience as the other three members and I cant work out why, because he was equally as important to the overall sound. This band was very much a quartet of very good rock musicians all playing for each other and for the songs. There was no posing, little indulgence and great subtlety to go with the brutal power on display. Maybe the bald guy was a new member or something – but I’m tipping that the bands fans will recognise his importance pretty soon.

The drummer was awesome. Rarely have I seen a rock drummer so content with his place in the band. Some drummers you see look like they want to be a singer or the guitarist but here was a guy who was utterly immersed in the role he played anchoring some massive grooves and providing some breathtaking heavy rock playing. He was a masterful rock drummer and you just couldn’t imagine him doing anything else. He must be rated highly by the band because it’s the first time I’ve seen a drummer have a crew member devoted to the role of swinging a boom mic into place every time it was needed for the drummer to contribute backing vocals.

He combined with a bass player who was equally superb. This guy had obviously been around and even though he looked like he was probably in his early forties he was obviously well in sync with his younger band mates. What a great player though – he played everything from slide bass, to classical piano to one of those 80’s looking “keytars” to a variety of basses and on every instrument he seemed to bring an almost orchestral perspective to the song. His playing was deeply hued and soulful and yet he remained true to the rock core of the songs. And he seemed to be having a great time – smiling at both his bandmates and the audience constantly.

Them Crooked Vultures are a unique band – there’s no doubt that they are influenced by some of the truly classic rock bands like Zeppelin, Cream and (in some moments) Blue Oyster Cult but they also play music that has been informed by the alternative rock of the 90’s. I’ve probably never seen a band that merges these two strains of rock so successfully which, when you think about it, is kinda surprising as they are probably more complementary than they have been previously considered. And they did it completely without irony. Whoever drew up the blueprint for this band was a real rock music purist and visionary. When it all came together as on the shows closer it was a force of monumental power and sheer rock music excellence.

At the end of the concert I turned to a bloke in a Them Crooked Vultures t-shirt. “What did you think?” I asked.

“Mate, even better than the record” he replied.
I left thinking how good it was to have seen a show without any pre-conceptions.