“However Right here We Are” (“We’re There within the Exercise”, in a really complimentary translation) is the Foo Fighters’ greatest album since 2011. Direct, proper? Nicely, the eleventh studio album from Dave Grohl’s entrance band is greater than that. The brand new album, launched on Friday (2), comprises easy lyrics in regards to the band’s latest losses with a sound that implies it’s “again to fundamentals”.
It’s the first act for the reason that loss of life of drummer Taylor Hawkins in March 2022. On the booklet, there’s a dedication to him. However not solely him. “For Virginia and Taylor,” he quotes Virginia Grohl, Dave’s trainer and mom, who handed away final August.
Drumming on the recordings is being dealt with by Josh Freese who’s scheduled to headline the present tour, with a present at Metropolis Competition in September. It doesn’t harm to do not forget that Dave was Nirvana’s drummer and performed all of the devices on studio variations of songs from the Foo Fighters inception.
An sincere and uncooked album
The band had already warned, by an announcement, that this could be “the primary chapter of a brand new life.” The thought, in accordance with them, was to launch an album with “a hard-hitting, emotionally sincere response to every thing the Foo Fighters have endured previously yr”. “That is the voice of the brothers who turned to the music that introduced them collectively for the primary time in 28 years, in a course of as a lot therapeutic as it’s a continuation of life.”
Who helps the band on this seek for a sound much less complicated than the earlier albums is exactly the person who produced the earlier albums. Greg Kurstin (Adele, Sia) is working with the band for the third time, after producing “Medication at Midnight” (2021) and “Concrete and Gold” (2017).
“However Right here We Are” has 10 songs divided into 48 minutes. It opens with the translucent guitar riff of “Rescued”, the primary single, launched in April. “It occurred so quick / Then it’s over / You’re considering what I’m considering / Is that this occurring now?” shouts the vocalist. The tune is included within the bundle of songs harking back to “Losing Mild”, a superb album from 2011, a part through which the band positioned extra worth on melodies than latest works.
Nevertheless, because the band predicted, it’s the early albums that the majority influenced at the moment’s sound. It may very well be a sport: listening to new Foo Fighters songs and attempting to guess which outdated tune every tune seems like.
“Below You,” about struggling (in useless) to beat trauma, is harking back to “The Start.” “Image us sharing music and cigarettes, that’s how I’ll all the time image you,” Grohl sings. Eager for his drummer buddy is the topic of different lyrics, resembling within the tune “Glass”: “I had somebody to like / And so, left to stay with out him.”
The album is stuffed with moments that ought to transfer followers of the band. “Present Me How,” for instance, Dave sang alongside together with his daughter: Violet, 17. The duo’s vocal harmonies improve the considerably generic dream-pop association. One other one which deviates a bit from the script is “Listening to Voices,” one of many higher vocals on the album, with a contact of The Treatment.
Along with Violet, the one look on the album, Dave is joined by bassist Nate Mendel, keyboardist Rami Jaffe, and guitarists Chris Shiflett and Pat Smyr. Anybody who’s seen Foo Fighters exhibits is aware of very properly that few bands make competent “traditional” rock, outdoor and within the studio.
This, after all, seems within the album, and particularly in “The Trainer”. There are 10 minutes that go by so rapidly: you begin to grieve and whisper; Then it explodes, like a extra mature “Higher Than You.” “Attempt to do one thing good with the air you let go / Depend each minute, residing breath by breath,” Dave teaches. After the lack of two of an important folks in his life, revelations like this are to be anticipated.
Dave stated that these dozen songs are “a testomony to the therapeutic powers of music, friendship, and household”. It’s additionally proof that the Foo Fighters are nonetheless alive, and let’s not overlook the losses which have rocked the division in latest months.