“Everyone talks about rock these days; the problem is they forget about the roll.”
– Keith Richards.
The pirate’s got a point. Band after band, song after song, the emphasis is too often on laying down a headbanging beat, on letting off a rip-roaring guitar solo, on getting the frontman’s hair just right. To be fair to contemporary rock ‘n’ roll, few drummers can really swing like the Stones’ own Charlie Watts.
Foo Fighters have always had the edge on every other rock ‘n’ roll outfit out there; they have two drummers in their band, and one of them is the man up front with the rhythm guitar. Dave Grohl attacks his guitar like a drum kit with strings, and his music is all the more strikingly original for it.
Raucous and melodic, new single ‘Rope‘ has a legitimate thrill about it. There’s urgency and the desperation of unspoken promises in Grohl’s longing bark of a voice, sparking up in those devastating lines: “On a kiss, I thought I’d save my breath for you”. Like all the best Foo songs, the intro sets up a mystery of mixed expectations, then flips them all upside down and inside out as soon as the song’s left-field rhythm kicks in.
…and what a rhythm. Former guitarist and partner-in-crime Pat Smear was recently welcomed back to the Foo Fighters line-up, after years of on and off touring. Three guitars in a band that isn’t Iron Maiden usually tends to muddy up the sound, but these men aren’t competing for the spotlight. With such power and precision in the band dynamic, the effect is less slushy hedonism, more sledgehammer riff trade-offs.
For Led Zeppelin fans, there’s a faint outline of ‘The Song Remains The Same‘ in Taylor Hawkins’ skin-thrashing. It’s hardly derivative; instead, it lends ‘Rope‘ that exceptional, unexpected swing that breaks up the guitar section’s sheer heart attack tactics.
‘Rope‘ is out on the 1st of March, and not a moment too soon. The band have been drip-feeding their fans with thirty second song snippets for the last couple of months, whetting their appetite for ‘Wasting Light‘, their first new album in nearly four years. ‘Rope‘ more than makes up for the teasing. It’s tense, edgy and it remembers to roll. That’ll do, pig. That’ll do.
The track is currently streaming at rope.foofighters.com.
(Simon Moore)
