Dave Grohl hit upon an inspired idea for the latest Foo Fighters album – why not record each track in a different US city, and use the opportunity to explore the musical history of each town? Of course, such a premise was just begging for the documentary treatment, and Grohl – who made such an assured directorial debut with Sound City, which examined the history of the famed LA studio where Nirvana recorded Nevermind – duly set up a series at HBO, which has made for predictably fascinating viewing.
Of course, the shadow of Grohl’s former band has hovered over his career, although it is striking just how different Foo Fighters are as a creative enterprise. Speaking as someone who ranks Nirvana and Blur as my favourite ever bands, I have to admit I have found little enough to latch onto in the Foos’ relatively straightforward mix of classic rock and no-frills punk, which contains little of the melodic ingenuity, sardonic humour and anti-establishment bite that made Nirvana such a phenomenon.
Nonetheless, Grohl remains one of the most charismatic stars in the rock firmament, and his collaborations with mavericks like Nine Inch Nails and Queens Of The Stone Age show that he has retained his taste for punk subversion. In addition, he and Krist Novoselic have done a wonderful job of protecting Nirvana’s legacy – the all-female line-up of singers who stood in for Kurt Cobain at the Rock N Roll Hall Of Fame concert earlier this year was a lovely touch that paid fitting tribute to the convention-breaking, rebellious spirit of the band.
So how has all this extra-curricular activity affected the latest Foos record? The truth is, not much. As with all of their previous seven albums, Sonic Highways is an expertly crafted collection of spiky anthemic rock, boasting lush production courtesy of the legendary Butch Vig (who did such a brilliant job orchestrating Nevermind’s quiet-loud-quiet dynamics).
The album opens with ‘Something From Nothing’, a driving rocker featuring a naggingly familiar melody, crunching riffs and pounding drums, not to mention a blistering coda played so fast as to verge on speed-metal. Recorded in Chicago at the Electrical Audio Studios of Steve Albini (another former Nirvana producer), the track also features guitar from Rick Nielsen, a member of that city’s famed power-pop outfit, Cheap Trick.
Next up is ‘The Feast And The Famine’, a wailing punk number that captures some of the grit of the renowned hardcore movement of the city in which it was recorded, Washington DC (the scene where the nascent Grohl cut his musical teeth). ‘Congregation’ is a classic Foos rocker, which features some lovely psych guitar work during the mid-song breakdown, whilst ‘What Did I Do?/God As My Witness’ is another exercise in awesome power-riffing, the second half of which contains some of the fists-in-the-air euphoria of Grohl favourites Queen.
After the moody rocker ‘Outside’ and the sweeping ‘In The Clear’ (which captures some of the epic grandeur of Arcade Fire, who Foos have been known to cover in concert), we come to the album’s two-part finale. A mid-tempo strummer with Beatles-y choruses that find Grohl ruing that “the truth is so unkind”, ‘Subterranean’ eventually segues into the album’s concluding track, ‘I Am A River’. A slow-burning ballad which builds from ethereal beginnings to a string-driven closing crescendo, the track also contains guitar from Joan Jett, one of the vocalists who fronted the reunited Nirvana earlier in the year.
So, that’s Sonic Highways. It doesn’t explore many areas Foo Fighters haven’t touched on before – but it is tailormade for rocking stadiums across the globe.
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