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Hey, everybody likes the Foo Fighters, right? Let's face it – they're likeable guys, and they seem to be in on the joke. The worst thing anyone can say about them is that they're a bona fide rock n' roll band that likes guitars, rocking out and generally smiling a lot. So what's the problem with that?
Problem with that – and with Grohl's history – is that it becomes easy to hail anything they do as the last great beacon of said rock n' roll. It's easy to give them the benefit of a collective doubt.
The trick then is to try to isolate Wasting Light as a setup (we went to Dave's garage and recorded on analogue tape – back to basics, man) and delivery. In this case, a fairly good back-to-basics rock n' roll record that's big on the noise (yay) big on guitars and drums (yay) and big on musically enchanting moments (yay).
Channel24 interview with Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins
But it's also unexpectedly and inexplicably light on memorable or charismatic lyrical hooks. Or maybe to put it more practically: most of the songs – actually all of them – seem to start out very interesting, but end up going too many places to keep track.
There are perhaps moments here and there - on "Back and Forth", "These Days" and "Dear Rosemary" come to mind - that hints at what should have been, but for the most part Wasting Light ends up sounding like a collection of meandering and overcooked lyrical threads that dead-end without much wrap-up. A bit of judicious cropping of ideas might have turned most of the songs into classics.
Problem with that – and with Grohl's history – is that it becomes easy to hail anything they do as the last great beacon of said rock n' roll. It's easy to give them the benefit of a collective doubt.
The trick then is to try to isolate Wasting Light as a setup (we went to Dave's garage and recorded on analogue tape – back to basics, man) and delivery. In this case, a fairly good back-to-basics rock n' roll record that's big on the noise (yay) big on guitars and drums (yay) and big on musically enchanting moments (yay).
Channel24 interview with Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins
But it's also unexpectedly and inexplicably light on memorable or charismatic lyrical hooks. Or maybe to put it more practically: most of the songs – actually all of them – seem to start out very interesting, but end up going too many places to keep track.
There are perhaps moments here and there - on "Back and Forth", "These Days" and "Dear Rosemary" come to mind - that hints at what should have been, but for the most part Wasting Light ends up sounding like a collection of meandering and overcooked lyrical threads that dead-end without much wrap-up. A bit of judicious cropping of ideas might have turned most of the songs into classics.
