Foo’s Next?
A lone review of the two-disc Foo Fighters album In Your Honor.
Foo Fighters- In Your Honor ***1/2
RCA
Before recording 2002’s One by One – the Foo Fighters almost broke up, they have now been together for ten years, making Dave Grohl f-you rich and famous; a whole head-and-shoulders above being a notable sideman in, you know, That Band. But more importantly what happened to that album was that Dave Grohl had written and recorded a full album’s worth of material, and at the last minute scrapped it. They ended up releasing it later, with new songs and to much critical and commercial success. He did the same thing with this album; Grohl initially imagined the Foo’s fifth disc as an acoustic solo disc disguised as a movie score, a side project similar to Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood’s atmospheric Bodysong. So there’s half of the story.
Upon immediate listening, disc one (the heavy disc) comes off as superior, but that’s only because disc two (the acoustic side) disarms you when you’re sleeping, quickly slips inside and beats disc one’s ass and emerges triumphant. The difference is a stronger song set, maybe because Dave Grohl spent all his “Heavy” energy split between Queens of the Stone Age, Tenacious D, (that’s him as zee Devil in their Tribute video) and his Metal side project Probot. Perhaps I would like disc one better if it didn’t have that extra layer of polish, I like my Foo’s in a rawer state like on their best-effort The Colour and The Shape.
Grohl spent most of ‘04 on the campaign tour with John Kerry, the album’s title is a tribute to him, and performed most of the Foo’s canon solo and acoustic for the people he saw that Kerry was there to save. And that could be another reason the songs are sharper on disc two.
Like I said before, the second disc takes more time to sink in. Cold Day in the Sun and Virginia Moon (with Norah Jones) are the only tracks Kurt’s ghost doesn’t appear on, other than that he dips liberally into That Band’s pool, (perhaps the one on the Nevermind cover) Friend of a Friend could be a coda to “Something in the Way.”
All through the album though, Grohl’s lyrical shortcomings become exposed: The sameness and vagueness of his love lyrics blunt their impact. Grohl is comfortable chronicling messy relationships but rarely digs deep enough to share insight into who he is, even when the music suggests introspection.
Maybe it’s just hard for me to imagine him as the “pained guy” when time and time again he’s been called the nicest guy in rock. But that doesn’t mean he’s not a bad songwriter.
What I wish is that they would have just put the best tracks of each and made one spectacular album. Below is an twelve track single disc offering what would have been a ****1/2 or ***** review, but feel free to try your own combinations.
Other notable guest appearances: Led Zep’s own John Paul Jones, and QOTSA’s Josh Homme.
The Best of Foo: Highlights of In Your Honor
In Your Honor
Best of You
Deepest Blues Are Black
Still
Resolve
Another Round
End Over End
Over and Out
Hell
Razor
Last Song
Friend of a Friend
Sideboard: Miracle, Cold Day in the Sun, Virginia Moon
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