Foo Fighters
The Colour And The Shape
The Band: David Grohl- Vocals, guitar, drums
Patrick Smear- Guitar
Nathan Mendel- Bass
William Goldsmith- Drums on ‘Doll’ and ‘Up In Arms’
Foo Fighters were formed in 1995 by former Nirvana drummer
Dave Grohl. Grohl was Nirvana’s drummer for a time period of four years. During this time he wrote many songs. Dave never showed any of these songs to Kurt, however. He feared that by trying to impose his material onto Kurt and the rest of the band it would ruin their chemistry. Proceeding Kurt’s death in 1994, Grohl entered Robert Lang’s studio in Seattle, with his friend Barrett Jones. Dave began to record many of his pent up tracks that he wrote while in Nirvana. Dave played every instrument and sang every word in the album, with the exception of guitar part in
X-static. He then went to Capitol Records and had the songs professionally mixed, with the results eventually becoming Foo Fighters self titled debut album. After recording Dave realized he didn’t Foo Fighters to be a one-man studio project, so he began the hunt for band members. At first one of Grohl’s main candidates was former band mate Krist Novoselic, but he dismissed the idea because he didn’t want people to think of Foo Fighters as a reincarnated Nirvana. After hearing about the break up of Seattle-based emocore band
Sunny Day Real Estate Grohl drafted the bands bassist (Nate Mendel) and drummer (William Goldsmith). Pat Smear, who was an unofficial member of Nirvana after the release of
In Utero, was added as a second guitarist. The band was now complete. From that point on the band would continue to rise in popularity despite suffering some line-up changes. Unfortunately the bands musical quality stopped rising after the Foo’s second official release
The Colour And The Shape. After that album there seemed to be a slight decline in the quality of the bands music. Although they haven’t been able to top their second release yet, I myself till have high hope for the future.
The Colour And The Shape is sort of a gloomy, depressing album. Many tracks seem to deal with relationship problems and etc. Based on that you probably won’t want to listen to this album everyday, unless your life is extremely depressing. For the most part this album kind of brings down your mood. If you’re already in a bad/sad mood then it’s fine. It’ll suite your mood perfectly. Some tracks are good to listen to on a daily basis due to there faster pace. Like
Monkey Wrench for example. It has a good steady pace throughout and is moderately catchy. Although, even that song is a little depressing. If you mix it up with some other non-depressing tracks that you may have on your music player, then you’ll be just fine. The album’s depressing overall won’t effect its score in anyway, but like I said it just makes it difficult to listen to that often. Well, perhaps not for some people. If you don’t mind depressing music and it doesn’t bring down your mood at all this might be right up your alley. I myself don’t enjoy listening to depressing music that much, unless it’s really, really heavy and fast paced. Otherwise it just bums be out. If that sounds like a description of how you feel when listening to music then I wouldn’t recommend buying this, just download a few tracks.
A large portion of this album’s songs can be related to relationships and break ups. This leads me to believe that this album was inspired by a past love of Grohl’s, or perhaps a current fling that wasn’t working out. Something along those lines anyway. I’m not sure that I particularly enjoyed that aspect of the album. It got kind of boring after a while. I don’t mind when one, or two songs deal with the same subject matter, but when more than half the album is about the same thing you’re pushing the envelope. Not to mention that the fact that this particular topic is really unoriginal, even in the time period that it was released. Think about it “relationships”, Elton John wasn’t even the fist person to sing about that and he debuted in 1969 (this album was released 1997). Now, I’ll admit that I’m overplaying this a bit, the lyrical messages didn’t really take a whole lot away from the album. Mainly because the lyrics were never that specific and had sort of a vague message. Anywho, I’ll provide you with a lyrical example from the track
Monkey Wrench.
Don't wanna be your monkey wrench
One more indecent accident
I'd rather leave than suffer this
I'll never be your monkey wrench
That track’s main message seems to be that Mr. Grohl doesn’t like to be whipped, or used as tool. Hence the title “Monkey Wrench” (A monkey wrench is a tool). Most other songs seem to follow similar patterns. So, in conclusion this albums lyrical messages are far from diverse, but the majority of them are adequately written at least. All the lyrics flowed together nicely, it’s too bad that Dave couldn’t think of more things to sing about.
Thanks to the generic lyrical messages it was left up to the instrumentals to save this album and save it they did. Not to say that they were the greatest instrumentals ever, but they certainly saved this album from a much lower rating. The guitar work was extremely solid. I particularly enjoyed the rhythm guitar. It was well written for the most part and the distinct combinations of dead notes and palm muting scattered about gave the album a bit more of a catchy feel. The rhythm guitar in the lighter tracks was great also. It was usually just chords, but they were well arranged and suited the songs well. I also liked the lighter guitar work because due to lack of diversity in the lyrical department some diversity was needed in the instrumentals. The lighter guitar provided this diversity, or contrast. Now let’s talk about the lead guitar, or lack thereof. In case you didn’t clue in from the last sentence there wasn’t a lot of lead guitar work to be heard. It didn’t effect the album too much, but it did lower the rating slightly. There was some nice lead work, however. For example the intro to Monkey Wrench. Other than that and a few other brief moments there was really no lead guitar. The bass work was slightly above average. For the most part it played root notes, but had the occasional shining moment. I particularly enjoyed Mendel’s tone. It went well with the guitar and seemed to elevate the guitar work some. My only real complaint about the bass is that it was difficult to hear at times, but that’s the case with most bands so it won’t effect this album’s rating much. Lastly we have the drums. They were splendid. Grohl did most of the drum work for this album, except for two tracks that were played by William Goldsmith. For the most part the drums were just simple beats, but with the style of music and the pace of this album there’s not much else that could’ve been done. There were also some excellent fills. No complaints about the drums.
Pros: Solid instrumentally
I liked Grohl’s voice
Cons: Bland lyrical messages
Overall Rating:
3.5/5
