Them Crooked Vultures simply lit up the Fillmore, giving hard rock the resurrection that it needed…

Here’s the full story from The Detroit News…who was there to witness the rebirth?

Them Crooked Vultures unveils itself at Fillmore

Adam Graham / Detroit News Pop Music Writer

When Dave Grohl, John Paul Jones and Josh Homme hit the stage at the Fillmore Detroit Thursday night, Grohl did something a lot of rockers wouldn’t do before sitting down to play: He smiled.

Turns out he had good reason to: He, unlike the rest of the audience, knew what was in store for the evening. By the end of the band’s crushing, hypnotic 80-minute set, most of the audience was smiling, as well.

Individually they’re members of an exceptional roster of bands (Led Zeppelin, Foo Fighters and Queens of the Stone Age speak for themselves) but together, Grohl, Jones and Homme are Them Crooked Vultures, and they came to town Thursday without an album or a single to their credit. Heck, even photos of the band are difficult to come by.

Since playing its first show together in August, the band has been shrouded in secrecy, and in order to preserve that secrecy, cameras were not allowed in to the Fillmore. Those caught taking photos on their cell phones were asked politely to put their cameras away, and second-time offenders were told they would be asked somewhat less politely.

In these days of media over-saturation — OMG, Miley Cyrus quit Twitter? — such mystery is hard to come by, and in a sense it’s refreshing. Still, it takes a leap of faith to ask an audience to sit through more than an hour of songs they’ve never heard before, and the 2,100 or so fans who showed up Thursday came strictly out of curiosity for the project and respect for the musicians.

But with a pedigree like Them Crooked Vultures has, it was a respect that was earned, and it turned out to be a splendid treat to see these three monsters of rock share a stage together.

The set opened with an intoxicating two-minute intro at the front end of “Elephants,” one of several elongated jams that unfolded throughout the evening. Homme, the sneering, hip-swiveling Queen of the Stone Age, dutifully took on frontman duties, though eyes kept drifting back to the interplay between Jones and Grohl.

Many in the audience — a heavily male crowd aged late 20s to early 40s — had likely never seen Jones and had probably never seen Grohl behind a drum kit, so watching the two masters was like rock geek nirvana (pardon the pun). With Homme — no slouch himself with his robotic, psychedelic stoner riffs shooting from his guitar like lasers — the third mixer in the band’s cocktail, the band’s bludgeoning yet melodic rock (think Queens of the Stone Age multiplied by 1,000) was nothing short of mesmerizing.

The band’s songs were expansive; “Elephants” stretched past the six-minute mark, “Reptiles” weighed in at more than eight minutes, and the closing “Warsaw” easily drifted past the 11-minute marker. Meanwhile, the transfixing “Nobody Loves Me and Neither Do I” seemed to literally breathe, rising and falling and rising again, like deep breaths taken after an exhaustive workout. These are smart, muscular songs, and the three principal players — they were joined on stage by utility man Alain Johannes — have compromised nothing in coming together. In fact, Them Crooked Vultures appears to be the rare supergoup that is more than the sum of its parts.

Homme played a jovial host, explaining to the audience he spent five days in town for a wedding about a month ago, and that he never truly understood Detroit until his trip. “I love this city — I don’t care what Time magazine says,” he told the crowd.

Grohl, meanwhile, was a Tazmanian Devil behind his kit, a whir of limbs, hair and jackhammering fills.

But it was Jones who was the star of the show, and drove the band with his propulsive rhythms. When introduced by Homme, he received the loudest applause of any of the players, and not only the fans but his bandmates, too, seemed to be in awe of Led Zep bassist’s presence.

Jones played keyboad on a pair of songs and even brought out a keytar during “Interlude with Ludes,” which became a bit of a strolling western-flavored number, and felt like the byproduct of one of Homme’s experimental “Desert Sessions.” During “Nobody Loves Me,” meanwhile, he played some sort of puzzling slide bass guitar that only he and his tech crew probably fully understand.

If nobody knew quite what they were in for when they arrived Thursday, they left knowing what they assumed to be true: Them Crooked Vultures is one of the most exciting new bands in years. Now all they have to do is release an album.

This entry was posted on Friday, October 9th, 2009 at 10:53 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.