Not without brilliant surprises but a little less than the sum of its parts, Them Crooked Vultures delivers what you would expect from these giants of rock, mixed in with some crap, usually in the same song. Exhibit A "Mind Eraser No Chaser" starts with a bad-ass riff that surely came from the axeman that gave us "Black Dog", derailed by a train-wreck on lyric writing including idiotic tongue twisters such as "new-age goose-step on a karma collision" and pretentious pseudo-profound garbage "ignorance is bliss until they take your bliss away" and "what does it mean when the knife and the hand are your own". The disco-tempo "Gunman" also falls into this trap with wtf lines "You're just a dog to be training. choke chained" and "I wanna go blind Wanna stare at the sun - De-evolution".
Things are better when Josh avoids trying to make a point, such as the driving "Scumbag Blues"**** and slide-heavy "New Fang"****. Vaguely Zeppelin-esque (chug!) "Bandoliers"**** almost gets lost in its cool chord voicings, but eventually the strange flow grew on me, as did the throwback production. "Reptiles" copies the feel of "South Bound Suarez", but it's definitely no shabby rehash. "Dead End Friends" is much more typical of Josh Homme, which isn't bad so much as unnecessary when he has another band to do this kind of stuff in. Nothing on the album plays it this safe, and even when they give us a 7:44 circus from hell they are clearly pulling out all the stops. "Caligulove" sounds awesome from the title alone but falls under its own weight. With the crap carefully hidden away in the back half of the album, for God's sake don't skip the epic hypnotic closer "Spinning In Daffodils"**** with its wall of rock giving way to a sublimely spacious slide guitar outro.
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