Review Summary: Something of a return to form for the Foo Fighters
Famous rock bands invariably have to deal with how to ‘age gracefully’. Which is fine of course, as the alternative is fade into obscurity. However, no matter how lauded or famous an artist or band might be, ‘aging gracefully’ is something most of them struggle with. Sticking with the sound that made them famous can consign them to ‘stuck in the past’, while drastic changes can lead to howls of ‘desperately trying to remain relevant’.
The last decade wasn’t the easiest to navigate for David Grohl and his Fighters. After starting off well with ‘Wasting Light’, ‘Sonic Highways’ in 2014 was a drastic change of strategy, while ‘Concrete and Gold’ sounded like it was filtered through a white noise machine.
However, their latest album, ‘Medicine at Midnight’ is a small dose of what the doctor ordered. On this latest effort, Grohl goes for a middle ground between ‘the old’ and ‘something different’. And, it mostly works.
The first single to drop, the sultry ‘Shame Shame’, while being a bit slower and sounding thoughtful, at least didn’t feature some radical, high-tech production. The second song in the track order, it’s one of the best tracks. The whole album generally follows this pattern of trying to return to what made their music so good in the late 90s when they were a relatively new band, while experimenting a little bit to try and get something fresh.
A great example is ‘Holding Poison’. This energetic rocker could slot right alongside ‘Wind Up’ or ‘My Poor Brain’ from ‘Colour and the Shape’, but some keyboards add a new element. The opening ‘Starting a fire’ feels like vintage Foo, but the use of female backing vocals, again, adds a new element.
The use of female vocals also works really well on one of the highlights ‘Cloudspotter’. This track is just Dave getting back to basics, but it’s a really stormer. The ultimate highlight, though, has to be ‘Waiting for a war’. It begins as an acoustic ballad, the use of strings slowly adds tension, and towards the end it culminates into a frenetic rocker, with lyrics that seem to bemoan the pointlessness of modern existence. More importantly, it showcases how far the band has come in terms of songwriting depth.
Some of the other songs include the uptempo, slightly bizarre ‘No son of mine’, while ‘Chasing Birds’ sounds like one of those daydream songs like ‘Walking after you’ or ‘Next Year’, but when you listen to the lyrics “the road to hell is littered with good intentions” you realise how drastically Dave’s lyrical focus has changed. It’s a melancholy and beautiful song that is somewhat unsettling. The biggest surprise on the album would be the title track. It sounds like lounge-pop meets blues, nothing like a Foo Fighters song, and the vocals try to sound kind of ‘Bowie’. The album closer sounds like stock a standard Foo rocker.
So, in short, no towering production, no bonus discs of jazz troubadour ballads, the drummer doesn’t play the flugelhorn as a cameo and no DVD with Pat Smear doing Magic Mike dancing. This is just ‘back to basics’ Foo Fighters music with solid songwriting, and is their best album since at least ‘Wasting Light’. There’s still a sense that this band hasn’t achieved its Magnum Opus yet, despite the promise they always show and the undoubted talent of its members. The fact this album is relatively short doesn’t help, but for now maybe that’s for the best.
