Review Summary: "Try and make good with the air that's left, counting every minute, living breath by breath"
“It came out of nowhere.” One of the first lines from the album, one of the best descriptors of everything that’s happened to the Foos recently, and one of the better ways to describe the announcement of this album, which emerged in April with the release of lead single “Rescued”. If I’m being honest, the fact that this album was made at all is beyond shocking. Taylor Hawkins’ death hit the world with such impact on the level of Chris Cornell and Chester Bennington’s respective passings. An integral part of the Foo Fighters was gone. How do you continue on as a band without such a crutch?
In the case of
But Here We Are, the answer seems to be that they continue well. Really well. Like, better than anything they’ve put out in the past decade.
Let’s start out with the biggest part of the album: the lyrics. This is an album that is unflinchingly, unrepentantly about grief, not just over Taylor, but over Dave Grohl’s recently departed mother. From “Rescued”’s pleading to be saved after the horrible sudden hammer swing of grief, to “The Glass”’s heartbreaking repeated line “There is something between us/Between me and you,” to literally the entirety of “The Teacher”, especially the final “Goodbye”s that close the track out, and, of course, “Rest”, this album is far and away the hardest-hitting and saddest thing that Foo Fighters have ever put out.
These lyrics are backed up by what could arguably be the Foo Fighters’ strongest songwriting since
Wasting Light. Discounting the production, which sometimes comes off as overly fuzzy and a bit too white noise-like at parts, the Foos are playing with renewed energy and emotion, with some of their catchiest choruses of the past few years, gorgeous song structure that doesn’t tend to overstay its welcome, to progressive touches like the title track’s 7/4 time verses, and the aforementioned “The Teacher”, which clocks in at just over 10 minutes, and wastes not one single second of it.
Vocally, Dave shines in the saddest way. It’s his strongest performance in years (notice a theme here?), but it’s clear that it comes from sadness and grief. Just listen to the way he practically screams “Goodbye” at the end of “The Teacher”, or his plaintive, quiet reflections on “Show Me How”. That track is enhanced by a guest performances from Dave’s daughter, Violet, the overlapping voices creating easily the most hauntingly sad and beautiful vocal duet that perfectly emphasizes the feelings of being lost and confused after a mother’s passing.
There’s probably a million more little disjointed observations I could make song-to-song about this album’s grief and sadness given musical form, but I’ll wrap it up with this: this album’s a hard listen due to the lyrical themes, but it’s a damn good one. The Foos have taken grief, and channeled it into a beautiful eulogy for their fallen family. It’s raw, it’s heartbreaking, it’s touching. And while not everyone may agree, I believe it’s the album they needed to make.
