Music Mondays - Them Crooked Vultures

I cna't imagine a better combination for a band than the one in Them Crooked Vultures.  If someone came up to me and said "Hey, Dave... imagine a band containing the guitarist from Kyuss and QOTSA, Dave Friggin' Grohl on drums, and - get this - the bassist from Led Zeppelin" I would've said something like "yeah, that'd be a cool band, but it's never going to happen."

So imagine my surprise when this very combination got together.  It really should be a music fan's wet dream, right?  A supergroup so perfectly formed... it's uncanny.

What's even more uncanny is the fact that the result is one that I would probably only rate as a 6 or 7 on a 10 point scale.  The rhythm section is frigging amazing, mind you - with Dave Grohl channeling John Bonham on drums and John Paul Jones rocking the bass, how can it not be? - but Josh Homme's vocals and guitars seem to remind me why I don't buy the new Queens of the Stone Age albums.  Granted, there are some amazing songs - "Reptiles", "Scumbag Blues", and, of course, their single "New Fang", but the album as a whole just seems kind of... flat?  Bland?  Repetitive?

Actually, I know what it is.  This is a jam album, much like most of the early Led Zeppelin albums.  I can understand why both Dave Grohl (Dave Grohl actually has a John Bonham tattoo on his arm) and Josh Homme want to channel Led Zeppelin, considering how they're playing with Zep's bassman... but the problem is, these guys are really jamming in a Led Zeppelin manner.  So, we get long songs that lack the depth of the great Zeppelin jams - just tracks of riff upon riff that could definitely afford to be cut down.

Apparently, Paul MacCartney was the first choice to play Bass on this album, which is kind of funny... since John Paul Jones was originally Led Zeppelin's second choice, too.  However, at least this time around, I really think the band should have gone with choice #1 - I think Paul would have been able to rein the band in a little bit, and focus on the final product, as opposed to the "let's jam" philosophy.