The Foo Fighters front man has a new
album but has kept the same
old rock sound - well, sort of. By Kevin
Raub
Unlike fine wines, most bands do not get better with age.
So maybe it's surprising that the Foo Fighters'
sixth and newest album, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, is
their best work since 1997's The Colour and the Shape.
Or maybe it's not so surprising. After all, the band tapped Colour
producer Gil Norton to helm this album. And he and front man (and
Nirvana alum)
Dave Grohl have filled the work with raucous rock and
roll. That's really no surprise, either, given the Foo Fighters'
12-year history of making that style of music. What is surprising
is that the album also includes fiddles and string quartets, and
that on it Grohl plays piano and sings a song called "Ballad of the
Beaconsfield Miners."
If you didn't know that Grohl had an aptitude for softer songs,
then you might not know these four things either.
1He's a grill
master.
"I've always been a backyard-barbecue kind of guy," says Grohl, who
in 1999 moved to
Alexandria, Virginia - not far from the suburban
Washington, D.C., neighborhood he grew up in - and stayed there
until he returned to
Los Angeles in 2005. "I spent most of my time
hanging out with people I have known since fifth grade."
2He's not into deep
contemplation.
"This sounds terrible," Grohl says, "but I don't put that much
thought into anything I do. In making albums, you don't necessarily
think about the follow-up to what you've just done. You just start
writing songs. We don't have a lot of time to sit around and
reflect."
3He rocks hard. He works
hard.
The Foo Fighters "haven't taken more than two months away from the
band in 13 years," Grohl says. "So at this point, the focus is
entirely musical. There's not a whole lot of career direction. For
the longest time, I kept these parameters around the band, like:
'We're a four-piece rock band. I don't want it to sound like Sgt.
Pepper's. Let's just make a rock record.' Eventually, you have to
punch your way out of that and do something more exciting
musically - melodically and lyrically deeper - so that was the
intention."
4He keeps his promises to
miners.
"A mine collapsed in Tasmania," Grohl says of a collapse in
Beaconsfield,
Australia, last year that killed one miner and
trapped two others for two weeks. "And when the rescuers first
contacted the miners, they couldn't pull them out, but they could
get them things to help until they were rescued. The first thing
one of the miners asked for was an iPod with the Foo Fighters on
it. I was genuinely moved. That's heavy. It made me feel like
something I have done is truly legitimate.
"Later, we went down to do an acoustic show at the Sydney Opera
House, and the night before, I wrote 'Beaconsfield' [which is on
the new album] to not only pay tribute to the guy but to give
something back to him since he gave me a gift that nobody else
could have. I played it for him that night. Afterward, we went out
and got trashed at a bar, and I told him I'd put it on a record. So
I did."
New CDs, DVDs, and Movies
You Should Check Out
By Bryan Reesman and Joseph
Guinto
HEAR
IT:
Motown: A Journey through Hitsville
USA, Boyz II Men
There's a big greatest-hits album
from an all-girl British pop group out this month.
Spice Girls, we hear the group is called. If they're
your kind of thing, buy the album, by all means. But
before you check out, also have a listen to another
reunion album. This one features an all-boy band (well,
they haven't been boys for a while now) and isn't a
collection of greatest hits - well, at least, not the
band's hits. Boyz II Men, one of the best-selling
R&B acts ever, has recorded songs from the Motown
catalog, including tracks made famous by the
Temptations, Marvin Gaye, and, yes, a young Michael
Jackson. If that doesn't sound perfect enough, also
know that another Jackson, American Idol's Randy
Jackson, produced the album. So there's that,
dog. |
HEAR IT AND SEE IT: The Flying
Club Cup, Beirut
You were expecting a toothless old gypsy right out of
central casting? Sorry, instead you're getting the
cherubic Zach Condon, a 21-year-old from New Mexico
who, at least with Beirut, sounds like a much older,
sadder traveling man. Fittingly for his gypsy sound,
Condon found inspiration in Eastern Europe for Beirut's
first album and wandered to France to find his muse for
The Flying Club Cup. This month, on November 12, Condon
will play in Paris at the Inrocks Festival and find out
if the French are flattered by his new music. |
SEE IT (BIG SCREEN): Love in
the
Time of Cholera
The screenplay for Gabriel Garcia Márquez's classic
novel could have been written in Spanish, but it
wasn't. So the film isn't in Spanish, either, which is
nice if you don't like reading the big screen. That the
movie stays true to Garcia Márquez's use of magical
realism is also nice, as is the fact that the studio
didn't insist on packing the film with big-name celebs.
Instead, Javier Bardem, whom you might remember from
Collateral, stars alongside Giovanna Mezzogiorno, whose
name, as you may remember from Italian class, means
"noon." Some of the cast is more recognizable. Benjamin
Bratt and Hector Elizondo have supporting roles, and
John Leguizamo has a lead part. You don't even want to
know what his name means in Italian. |
SEE IT (SMALL SCREEN): The Addams
Family: The Complete Series
Why does this simple sitcom seem so subversive today?
Is it John Astin's smarmy charm as Gomez? Morticia's
slinky dress? Uncle Fester's radical political
diatribes? No. And definitely not the last one. Maybe
it's because, whereas today's sitcoms are mostly about
dysfunctional families trying to get along in a
functional world, the Addams family was, in fact, a
completely functional family living in a world that, at
least to them, seemed totally outer-limits nutbar. Or
something. Either way, this DVD set (to be released
November 13) includes a featurette on that snappy theme
song as well as a seemingly impossible commentary track
by Thing and Cousin Itt. |
SEE IT (SMALL SCREEN): The Best
of the
Colbert Report
We're not sure how a DVD collection filled with comedy
bits from a topical show is going to hold up as time
goes on. But we are sure that Stephen Colbert and his
show's writers won't have any trouble coming up with a
tagline for the box cover. Consider the works of
staggering genius they've already come up with, like
this tagline about Colbert: "America's most described
journalist." And this opening quote from the show: "Get
ready for authenticity, voracity, and verity. Someone's
been reading a thesaurus! This is The Colbert
Report!" |
SEE IT (SMALL SCREEN): Pixar
Shorts
Father-and-son office lamps play ball, a snow-globe
snowman seeks to escape his confinement in order to woo
a cute Barbie-like doll, and an alien fails his UFO
test. Such is the wacky world of Pixar's short films.
These works date back to 1984 and include abbreviated
bits from the animation outfit's well-known franchises
The Incredibles, Cars, and Monsters, Inc. There's also
a behind-the-scenes feature on animation genius and
Pixar guru John Lasseter, who, we hear, passed his UFO
test on the first try. |