Inside Nokia Music

I have been massively excited about this album, from the first day that I heard about Dave Grohl’s latest side project, Them Crooked Vultures. Surely mixing aspects of Foo Fighters, Led Zeppelin and Queens of the Stone Age into one super group would leave fans more excited than seven dwarfs who have found out that Snow White is being replaced with Megan Fox. This has been demonstrated by all announced live gigs selling out before the group had officially released any material, so is it justified?

Overall I think the album has a more mature and grown up feel to it, especially when comparing it to previous Foo Fighters albums, a sort of Foo Fighters for dads. This of course isn’t a bad thing. It has much more of a classic hard rock feel, with blues and psyc rock influences to the structure of the songs, and the distinctive vocals of Josh Homme means that there is always going to be an instant association with Queens of the Stone Age.

The first song, No One Loves Me & Neither Do I,  really sets out what this album is all about; the effects on the guitars and vocals make you want to believe that this was recorded in Dave’s garage, probably a massive garage with more electrical kit than your average Death Star, but the thought was there. You can feel that the song is building up to something and after 2 mins it really kicks in with a massive distorted riff and the album has started properly.

It then flies into a Mind Eraser, No Chaser which I reckon would fit easily on a Queens of the Stone Age album. My favourite track is Elephant, both in listening terms and in terms of the first track that I would learn how to play. The intro is awesome and I would have loved to have been in on the jam session where they came up with this.

I think this album is great, it all fits together so well and I have been listening to it over and over again. It is a great tribute to proper classic rock bands and I am hoping that it will kick off a bigger revival for this type of music.

The Arctic Monkeys have announced Cornerstone as the follow up single to Crying Lightning from third album Humbug. Once again the band have joined forces with Oxfam and will only be releasing the 7″ version through Oxfam’s high street charity stores.

Cornerstone is the only song on Humbug to not be produced by finger-in-all-pies man Josh Homme but rather James Ford, the man responsible for producing and playing drums on lead singer Alex Turner and Rascals frontman Miles Kane’s side project The Last Shadow Puppets. As well as co-producing the Arctic Monkeys second album Favourite Worst Nightmare, James Ford is also a finding member of Simian, current member of Simian Mobile Disco and has produced albums for the likes of Peaches, Test Icicles, Mercury Prize winning Klaxons album Myths Of The Near Future and Mercury Prize Nominee’s Florence And The Machine’s Lungs among several others.

Cornerstone is an excellent second single choice though obvious if Favourite Worst Nightmare’s single chronology is anything to go by as the song is easily comparable to Favourite Worst Nightmare’s second single Fluorescent Adolescent and has been hailed a fan favourite since Humbug’s release. An interesting and useless observation is that the band have abandoned the thematic approach they adopted for Favourite Worst Nightmare’s run of singles.

Klaxons, Florence And The Machine, The Last Shadow Puppets and Arctic Monkeys are all available to download from the Nokia Music Store

Well the rumours turned to fact last night as Josh Homme/Dave Grohl/John Paul Jones supergroup Them Crooked Vultures took the stage at the O2 Academy Brixton in support of Arctic Monkeys.

The results were a deafening hard rock onslaught of the highest order that left me fuzzy headed and grinning ear to ear. This coupled with possibly the heaviest set ever played by Arctic Monkeys made for a monumental event of historic proportions.

It’s fair to say I can transcend this life now!