Foo Fighters return after three years with ‘Sonic Highways‘ and, as everyone has come to expect, all the usual components parts are there: powerhouse performances and extremely strong writing.
You cannot fault the Foo’s penchant for reliably ploughing a very specific and enjoyable furrow. At only eight songs in total, ‘Sonic Highways’ could almost be a mini album, yet although it may be reasonably compact in length, it is a very full album.
This is an instance in which a band has merely weeded out all the unnecessary to truly focus on the whole – something that so many albums would benefit from; rather than being a mixed bag of twelve tracks, it’s simply just eight extremely strong ones.
Sonically, it offers nothing you haven’t heard before from the band, but then after all these years it’s apparent this formula works, and works well. What this album does offer is a more concise and focused approach to achieving its goal. There is no dip, no low and no moments just filling space. All the tracks are strong, but oddly they are evenly strong.
There is no obvious standout moment, which is not to say the songs don’t stand out, but the consistency of the record means that it is the complete package which stands out. Each component part can and does stand alone, but the brilliance of the record is its cohesion and progression. It could almost be seen as a single piece of work, ebbing and flowing, building and building until its superb final crescendo ‘I Am a River‘.
‘What Did I Do/God As My Witness‘ and ‘Subterranean‘, along with ‘I Am A River’, are in the best traditions of the Pope tracks that could be considered primus inter pares, first among equals. But this is really splitting hairs, as on another day this list could be very and just as deservedly different.
What does stands out is the strength of character to never feel pressurised into changing. Like a modern day, heavier and hairier (though only slightly) take on what Tom Petty has been peddling for many a year, the Foo’s records are of a type. And like Petty, they have a sound that appears simultaneously like something you know so very well, and like nothing you’ve heard before. Their records are not obviously poppy or of the moment, but are always commercially popular and retain an extremely loyal following.
Dave Grohl and his cohorts charge endlessly into their sound, fearless and filled with self-belief. And it’s a self-belief not born of the success of what they do, but from its validity. ‘Sonic Highways’ is not on-trend, has no gimmicks and offers no one what they were asking for this year. It is just fundamentally good music, for no other reason. Songs that are simply written with feeling, and performed with passion.
The power of the record lies solely in its strength in depth, all framed wonderfully, hitting hard, somehow offering a cohesion. A cohesion born not from stylistic conceits, but through sheer strength and honesty.
It may not have the obvious hits of some of their other albums, but ‘Sonic Highways’ is as strong as anything they have released. This is the sound of the Foo Fighters at their most mature, most comfortable, and perhaps their most exciting.
This is the sound of a band achieving exactly what they set out to do, and in music you cannot ask for a purer pleasure than that.
