From the scream of fury opening\u00a0Caught in the Echo,\u00a0the new Foo Fighters album has a clear message: this is Dave Grohl\u2019s return to punk rock. In the late Eighties Grohl was the teenage drummer in the Washington DC hardcore band Scream. In 1990 he joined Nirvana, at that point an underground trio welding stoner insouciance with punk intransigence, and got rather more than he bargained for.<\/p>\n
You can understand why Grohl headed towards a more wholesome and, as it proved, commercially palatable stadium-rock sound with the Foo Fighters after the suicide of the heroin-addicted Kurt Cobain in 1994. But recent events have sent him hurtling back to those pre-Nirvana days, when piling into a van and taking off for another chaotic gig in another town was as good as life got.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know you should be dead. But you\u2019re alive instead!\u201d Grohl roars on\u00a0Of All People, a tale of a drug dealer from the bad old days surviving against the odds, backed by the most basic overdriven riff imaginable.\u00a0Spit Shine,\u00a0which enters the realm of primeval thrash, takes aim at Grohl\u2019s own insatiable ambitions. \u201cThe grass is never greener. Time ain\u2019t no redeemer,\u201d he shouts, which brings a realisation. This is indeed a return to the simplicity of the early days in sound and approach, with the album being recorded over a few days in Grohl\u2019s home studio, but it comes from the perspective of a wealthy, famous middle-aged man taking stock of his life. You can never go back, though, and there is sadness to Your Favourite Toy\u2019s yearning for the innocence of youth.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
On top of that, there\u2019s a lot to take stock of in Grohl\u2019s case. In 2022 the Foo Fighters\u2019 drummer, Taylor Hawkins, seemingly a healthy, muscular figure, died in Colombia with various drugs in his system<\/a>. Then came the announcement from Grohl, a happily married father of three daughters, that he had a fourth child from an extramarital affair<\/a>. If that wasn\u2019t enough, the guitarist Pat Smear had to miss a tour after a bizarre gardening accident. The Foo Fighters, the no-drama rock band who got to the top through hard work and all-American enthusiasm, turned out to be as complex and fallible as the rest of us.<\/p>\n \u201cNice guys grow on trees,\u201d Grohl roars on\u00a0Your Favourite Toy, apparently addressing the fallibility of his \u201cnicest guy in rock\u201d image, before questioning his reason for marital infidelity. \u201cIs that treasure not enough?\u201d he asks of himself. Then there is the doomy\u00a0Child Actor, another autobiographical song, this one about the thing that drives every lead singer: a need for validation. \u201cWas I ever good enough? Is it me that they see when the cameras are off?\u201d<\/p>\n Ultimately, however, Your Favourite Toy is not a therapy session. It\u2019s an album of tight, loud songs from one of the biggest bands out there, who are pining for the good old punky days amid the problems of middle age. And who can blame them?\u00a0(Roswell Records\/Columbia Records)
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