Wasting Light, Shining Bright?

What’s the best way to make a chart topping record? Book a multi-million dollar recording studio with all the latest technical wizardry and a hotshot producer or kit out a garage with analogue tape-to-tape recording equipment and hire a producer you haven’t worked with for 20 years?

Well Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters decided on the latter, Grohl’s garage may not be like the one attached to your average two-up-two-down, it’s more like an aircraft hangar, and the producer is none other than Butch Vig, who Grohl last worked with on the eponymous Nevermind by Nirvana.

The Foo Fighters seventh album, Wasting Light, is a breath of fresh air and a new beginning for the ex-Nirvana man’s main project. After a brief stint last year with rock super-group Them Crooked Vultures, along with Josh Homme (Queens of the Stone Age, Eagles of Death Metal) and John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin), Grohl has returned with new vigour and a fresh direction. 

Butch Vig has stripped down the production and made the Foo’s shine as bright as they ever have, producing some of their finest moments since 1997’s The Colour and the Shape (and without Pro Tools in sight). A guest appearence from Krist Noveselic on I Should Have Known and Pat Smear (ex-Nirvana tour guitarist) re-joining the band for the album make this somewhat of a Nirvana reunion album.

 

The usual Foo’s stadium rock anthems are still here, the first single Rope being a prime example, but added to the mix are a much broader blend of songs than usually seen on a Foo Fighters album. Songs like Dear Rosemary and Arlandria may lower the tempo but certainly not the intensity or power of the tracks on show and even provide the album with some of its highlight moments.

White Limo is a blast-from-Grohl’s-past when he played with D.C. hardcore band Scream in the early 90’s, this three-and-a-half minute track is full of ferocity, aggression and face melting riffs from start to finish and showcases the immense variety that is on offer in Wasting Light.

The lyrical content is some of the most soul bearing featured on any Foo Fighters album. The penultimate track I Should Have Known is a heart-rending song about the passing of Grohl's childhood friend Jimmy from a drug overdose a few years back. 

With Grohl's experience of losing friends to drugs (Kurt Cobain if you didn't already know) he is still unable to forgive his friend for what he's done. Although the song clearly shows that Grohl is grieving he cannot forgive you yet and probably feels he should have intervened before it was too late.

This record is certainly a new direction for Grohl and the boys and if it’s going to sound like this then the new direction is going to be a very enjoyable ride.

Album Highlights: Dear Rosemary, Rope, Burning Bridges. But to be honest this is all killer, no filler and is amazing for beginning to end. My album of 2011 so far.