The Foo Fighters - Classic or Dud?

discovered that grohl has done the 'back to basics just five guys in a room ROCKING OUT' spiel at least twice now with both wasting light and concrete and gold lol

Speaking of Pat, I don't think I've ever seen a clip of him where he didn't look like he knew he's gotten away with pulling a fast one. Like, Grohl and Hawkins are competing for role of Hamosaurus Rex, and Pat is all, lol, I can't believe this is making me rich.

concrete & gold really isn't "5 guys in a rooom back to basics" etc tho, it's his first album with greg kurstin - he was collabing with McCartney and Justin Timberlake and Shawn from BoyzIIMen

he tried to spin it that way though is the thing

just ten guys with 1000 grammys between them making a stripped down rock and roll record

To be fair, haven't they been pushing that "5 guys in a room back to basics" since Wasting Light? Iirc, that was the album where they made a big deal about recording in Grohl's garage, y'know, just 5 guys in a millionaire's garage recording studio. Think that HBO project thing was the only one recently that wasn't pitched as such, given the collaborative nature.

they also made a big deal about wasting light being recorded to tape

hard to tell

wasting light is still totally the best foo fighters record since there is nothing left to lose and it's not close

they also made a big deal about wasting light being recorded to tape

lol I remember this, made all the difference I'm sure lads

Eh, I'd actually argue that Wasting Light is the best Foos record outside of the first three, but that's a low bar.

that's what i said

the new one hasn't been pitched as "back to basics" either this time is it's "we wanted to sound like bowie's let's dance and there's drum loops which counts as sonic experimentation for us" but i couldn't tell any of that from the singles

lol xp sorry Brad, totally missed your post!

Always mildly fascinated with bands of a certain stature where you suddenly realise theres 5 or 6 guys in the band (especially when they could/did get the job done with 3)

If you have six guys instead of three then you only need to work half as hard. #math

Granted i know Dave has a lot of friends

Sorry that sounded snarky - if there is a nexus between decent payday and easy-going guys rocking out FF looks about as attractive as it gets

On the other hand, I imagine the cost of cleaning and caring for Taylor and his cage has got to be considerable.

i'm relistening to there is nothing left to lose and this band's existence was worth it for "generator" alone

hell yeah, i remember "aurora"

run from "generator" to "headwires" is prob the best set of foo fighters songs ever

i dream of an emo/power-pop hybrid band that only puts out songs that sound like "headwires"

It's an excellent record.

Speaking of Pat, I don't think I've ever seen a clip of him where he didn't look like he knew he's gotten away with pulling a fast one. Like, Grohl and Hawkins are competing for role of Hamosaurus Rex, and Pat is all, lol, I can't believe this is making me rich.

Right?! That look on this face...

i put on wasting light right after and this album is great too, i find it very frustrating that right after this they made a record with a conceptual scale grohl's songwriting could never live up to (and said concept was kind of silly and threadbare in the first place—"we, the alternative rock band foo fighters, are gonna record in famous studios around the country and capture the magic therein, and the final result will be a really overblown foo fighters record"). like just put out power pop records with good songs on them, check out this one you made in 2011

yeah I feel the exact same way...it's doubly frustrating because you'd think there would be tons of veteran bands just cranking out solid pop-rock records like that and AFAIK there really isn't

rereading the wikipedia page for wasting light, i think it’s one of the most successful “back to our roots” projects i’ve ever heard. this is the exact kind of band that should be going back to their roots lol

One thread that disappeared too quickly from Grohl's music was the goofiness and spontaneity, especially on the back half of the debut. They carried it on with the videos for a couple of albums, but that element was an important part of why I absolutely loved the debut when it came out. It was such a balm in the years when alt-rock radio was inundated with self-serious sadsacks.

yeah I feel the exact same way...it's doubly frustrating because you'd think there would be tons of veteran bands just cranking out solid pop-rock records like that and AFAIK there really isn't

― stimmy stimmy yah (Simon H.), Tuesday, February 9, 2021 9:09 AM (forty-one minutes ago)

wait, what? did you leave out a qualifier here or something? because there are lots of veteran bands cranking out solid pop-rock records.

finally, the drum parts in foo fighters songs are always really fun to learn

once halloween shows are a thing again i think my band is inevitably gonna do a foos cover set

+ nirvana "breed"

pre-sold

This whole thing has been good in that it’s made me remember how great the debut still is.

That and “Everlong” (and maybe three other songs) is all the Foo I need.

once halloween shows are a thing again i think my band is inevitably gonna do a foos cover set

pls do "low"

also as far as one off foos tribute acts go is "noo fighters" taken

"faux fighters" was right there

"nirvano"

somehow the main thing that's come of this revive for me is that i have "Fraternity" stuck in my head. i don't even know what it was a B-side to - a friend put it on a mixtape for me in my freshman year of college. kind of a dumb one-idea song but that one idea is annoyingly headsticky.

also i remember my roommate hearing the lyrics as a tedious boast "I'm in a big fraternity, I'm in the Beef Fraternity-y-y"

i agree w Brad re Wasting Light, it’s such a great album

everything after it sounds homogenous/generic, new album is ~fine~ but boring

it’s a shame bc they seem in general to be v funloving & enthusiastic music nerds, but i think they lost their looseness & sense of fun in the grind of putting out new material

like they take themselves too seriously & deadens the music somehow idk

listening to TINLTL right now for the first time in eons. it's closer to TCATS than i remembered which is a good thing, and less exhaustingly compressed than it sounds in my memory.

"Headwires" even feels almost like an attempt at another "Everlong," with the "better than a bullet being fired" part sounding a great deal like "If everything could ever feel this real forever." I like the watery opening riff, always reminded me of 16-bit video game music for some reason.

... wow the foo fighters s/t really slaps from front to back. i used to think it was a little undeveloped compared to the follow-ups but nope! wrong!

“exhausted” is like an alt universe catherine wheel song

ooh! the debut sounds amazing in my memory but I've been a bit afraid to return in case I'm wrong

I remember having the tape with me during a field trip in 3rd or 4th grade, and my friend being amused by the title "For All the Cows" and making up a sorta Monty Python-esque version of what it might sound like (first Python fan in my life).

if anything it sounds more amazing now, though my love for idiosyncratic rock records that unite several substrains of punk and alt rock (“floaty” is a GREAT emo song) and sometimes subvert their hooks in hilarious endearing ways cf. “good grief”

... is maybe peaking atm

For fans of the first one, this is also worth a listen:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzTGRxUlyV8

X-Static is my favorite Foo song

my TINLTL listen kinda petered out - dug "Headwires" but otherwise it's not so much my jam after track 7. i remembered a high school friend really really connecting with "M.I.A." but it never landed for me. maybe at 17 i had just reached the end of my finding dave's shouty rawk voice cool, and if it had come out a little earlier i would have thought it was the rock album of the year, idk. still my plan now is to revisit the debut tonight and probably tomorrow take my first dip into their later albums with Wasting Light!