To say the Foo Fighters have been through a lot in the past year might be a slight understatement.
The band’s long-time drummer Taylor Hawkins unexpectedly passed away in March 2022 while on tour in South America. It put a band that’s normally never turning down offers and headlining festivals every time you turn around back in the strange spot that everyone was in two years prior. This loss rocked the music world and it hit me pretty hard too for a couple of reasons. First, as a drummer myself, Taylor was and still is always someone I look up to and someone I put at the top of the list when people ask me about drummers I love which, admittedly, isn’t often but, still. Second, I had just seen the band live for the first time a month prior in Arizona at Innings Festival. I had been wanting to see them for so long and the entire set was such a great time and full of such positive energy, I had the time of my life jumping around, dancing, and singing all these songs I’d been listening to for the majority of my life until I was hoarse. Of course, getting to see Taylor play live was huge for me as well. Still to this day, I’ve never seen a drummer play with so much ferocity and so much precision at the same time.
Taylor’s loss wasn’t the only one to hit the band, however. A few months after Taylor passed, frontman Dave Grohl also lost his mother, Virginia. I don’t know many big rockstars that are champions for their moms like Dave was for his. She wrote a book called From Cradle to Stage that was later transformed into a Netflix series about artists and their mothers and in true Dave Grohl fashion, he always made sure she got the spotlight for it in the press tour, even though many interviewers would try putting it on him. The loss is also one that Dave has been mourning in silence as the only official confirmation of her passing comes on the album’s dedication: For Taylor and Virginia.
In a way, the title of the album doesn’t really feel like a mission statement or a way to wrap up some grander concept, it feels like a reflection of where the band is at right now. They’ve been through a lot, but here they are. They’re not just here for a check or for an excuse to get back on the road though, they’ve channeled the grief into their best album since 2011’s Wasting Light.
I hate to give the band a back-handed compliment but I was worried going into this album that it would be another bland and basic Foo Fighters album. Wasting Light is still my favorite album from the band and the lightning-in-a-bottle feel from the band recording it in Dave’s garage is incredible. The band followed it up with Sonic Highways which was released in tandem with an HBO series of the same name. The easiest thing I can say is that the show was way more interesting than the music. Concrete & Gold was a fine album, nothing more, nothing less. Finally, 2021’s Medicine at Midnight was a giant head-scratcher. I don’t know if the band has sounded any less inspired than they did on that album.
I will say this as one of my only negative takeaways from this album since it’s something that’s always plagued the band and that’s that yes, a lot of these songs are blown out and compressed but a.) it’s the Foo Fighters so you should’ve expected this and b.) it doesn’t make anything on this album any less enjoyable or heart wrenching.
Take lead single Rescued for example. It has all the elements of a typical Foo Fighters song. Blaring distorted guitars, fierce drumming (speaking of drumming, by the way, Grohl is the man behind them across this whole album), Dave Grohl’s voice screaming at times over the top of it, a hook and chorus made for tens of thousands of people to sing along to at a festival or a stadium, and a steady groove to keep you engaged and moving.
But where these songs start to differ from typical Foo Fighters songs is in the lyrics which all over this album deal with loss, grief, and what to do in the midst of all of it. Grohl still doesn’t have all the answers and he doesn’t pretend to either, but he’s trying his best to figure it all out. That’s the main focus of Nothing At All which comes in around the album’s mid-point with Grohl singing in the chorus:
I’ll get by or maybe I won’t
I can lie and say that I don’t
Waste my time, lately, I know
It’s everythin’ or nothin’ at all
It’s also explored in the song Beyond Me in the back half of the album which is a beautiful piano ballad that ends up exploding into a power ballad at the second chorus. Grohl sings on the pre-chorus about how everything we love grows old, or so he’s told and you have to release the things you hold dear, or so he fears. Rather than trying to come to a conclusion or make sense of it, he simply sings that it’s beyond him to know what life has in store for everyone.
I’ll say this much about Rescued, it’s a solid song, but I’m happy it’s the opener because compared to the rest of the album, it’s the safest the band plays it. It doesn’t take long to realize that once Under You starts. Instrumentally and riff-wise, yes, it’s pretty safe as well. However, the lyrics on the song are heartbreaking. Grohl opens by singing about walking a million miles looking for Hawkins and saying it feels like yesterday that he was walking a million miles with him, the second verse is also pretty tough with Grohl singing:
Someone said I’ll never see your face again
Part of me just can’t believe it’s true
The pre-chorus and chorus are probably the sharpest cuts in the song with Grohl singing:
Over it, think I’m getting over it
But there’s no getting over it
There are times that I need someone, there are times I feel like no one
Sometimes I just don’t know what to do
There are days I can’t remember, there are days that last forever
Someday I’ll come out from under you, out from under you
The hits never slow down on this album and I mean that both in terms of quality songs and emotional gut punches. The first half of the album mainly sticks to the band’s standard arena rock fare. Hearing Voices was the first song that I heard on this album that really got me when I first listened. Something about the repeated chorus of “I’ve been hearing voices, none of them are you” really hit. The Glass hits the same spot for me with Grohl singing about things he’s found that he’s been left to live without. Visions of those he’s lost, a version of love and of home, he bluntly ends by saying he had someone he loved and was left to live without. The title track doesn’t hit as hard lyrically in my opinion but this without a doubt Grohl’s best vocal performance and one of the band’s best performances as a whole. Weaving through a ton of different time changes effortlessly.
The final stretch of this album is the part I appreciate the most. Yes, the arena rock stuff is good. But on the last four songs here, not only are the lyrics the best across the whole album, but the band also starts experimenting and branching out from just playing to their strengths. Show Me How is a kind of sludgy, almost shoegaze song that features a duet between Dave and his daughter Violet, which makes lyrics about taking care of things once someone has passed on more touching than they would’ve been if it was just Dave solo.
The album’s mightiest punch comes in its final two tracks: The Teacher and Rest.
The Teacher is, to date, the longest Foo Fighters song, clocking in at a hair over 10 minutes and it is fantastic. The first half of the song fits perfectly with the first half of the album. There’s a driving drum beat, killer riff, and lyrics aside, I can picture tens of thousands of people bouncing up and down to this in a stadium or festival environment. Grohl’s drumming on this half of the song is absolutely nuts but once again, it’s the lyrics that set this song over the top. This might be a reach but given the title, the dedication, and the way the song is arranged and written, it does feel like a reflection of the day Grohl lost his mother. He asks at the beginning of the song “Who’s at the door now?” which to me reads as him waking up and asking, “Whose turn is it today?” He also adds in the second verse:
Hurry now, boy, time won’t wait
The here and the now will separate
There are some things you cannot choose
Soul and spirit movin’ through
There’s also a super dramatic repeating of the “Who’s at the door now?” question about two and a half minutes in followed by Dave singing and then screaming “WAKE UP!” as the instrumental intensifies and reaches its climax before the song bows out and is nothing but guitar feedback. The song kicks back in for a final rocking verse that depict being torn up but still having hope with Grohl singing:
Two cold stones on a riverbed
Ripped and torn, cannot mend
Old white candles on a dusty porch
One flame down, another born
However, the heaviest lyrical punch on the song and, for me personally, on the entire album comes at the end of the song with Grohl singing with a pain in his voice that almost sounds like he was crying in the studio as he delivered the lines. He sings:
You showed me how to breathe, never showed me how to say goodbye
You showed me how to be, never showed me how to say goodbye
Every page turns, it’s a lesson learned in time
Try and make good with the air that’s left
Countin’ every minute, livin’ breath by breath
By breath, by breath, by breath, by breath, by breath
He changes the lyrics the second time to sing about how his mom showed him how to need and how to grieve but still never taught him how to say goodbye to her. Having to hear this line on repeat listens has been tough and it kills me a little bit inside each time I hear it. The song ends with Grohl screaming out “GOODBYEEEEE” as the song gets overtaken by a BitCrusher and an abrupt ending leading into the final song which is such a beautiful send-off to this album, to Taylor, and to Virginia. It’s an acoustic, almost lo-fi song until the 2:45 mark when there’s a huge wall of sound that hits with buzzy guitars and that almost sound like synths, it feels like something off the last Yeah Yeah Yeahs album. The choruses are simple but still painful with Grohl repeating that those he’s lost can finally rest and that they’re safe now. There’s also a fantastic line about how time will always escape us until our time is up. It’s the perfect way to wrap this album up.
To wrap this all up, I have to say that this is an incredible but confusing album. I say confusing because I still don’t know what response this album wants from me. Does it want me to smile? Does it want me to cry? Does it want me to scream its choruses back to the band while surrounded by tens of thousands of strangers? I’ve knocked out the first two and I’m sure I’ll be able to knock out the third this October at ACL Fest. When Taylor Hawkins’ death was first announced, I was positive the Foo Fighters would never play a show again and possibly never even record music again. For them to have a new album out a year and change after is a remarkable feat, especially when it’s this good and this heartfelt.
Long live Taylor Hawkins and long live Virginia Grohl.
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