Having patience with ‘Echoes’
OK, upon further review, that new Foo Fighters album isn’t so bad after all. I do still stand by my statement that many artists do tend lose touch with their audiences as time goes on, and that this album is an example of that. But there are some really, really good moments on this record, that stay with you. Possibly the biggest highlight for me is the final track, “Home.” Dave Grohl on piano?! Is there an instrument he CAN’T play?! “Stranger Things Can Happen” lodges itself into your brain and holds on for dear life. (Including the wind-up metronome is a nice touch too …) The two singles, “The Pretender” and “Long Road to Ruin,” do succeed in beautifying the landscape of radio.
But for all the bright spots on the album, there are a fair share of forgettable tracks. This is the first Foo Fighters record that I cannot listen to from start to finish without having to skip tracks. Does the need for an artist to evolve water down the primal connection he has to the listener? Do songwriters run out of material and start settling for mediocrity? Or, perhaps, it is the listener that is stuck in nostalgia, preferring the familiar over the experimental. Maybe I am guilty of that. Or, maybe, it’s a little of all of the above?
Yes, “Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace” is the Foo Fighters’ most sophisticated album to date. And I do think that’s a good thing. But on a primal level, their first album — a rough, glorified demo featuring Grohl on every instrument — has done more for me personally than “Echoes” has. There was just something raw and simple about that first one. It’s the kind of album that when you listen to it it takes you back to wherever you were in your life when you first heard it.
Perhaps I should just stop bitching and just be grateful for a seventh rocking album. Man … I wonder what Nirvana’s seventh album would have sounded like. You think Kurt would have tried out the piano?!?!?
ROCK!
=Ben=
ps: Incidentally, you should check out this interview Grohl did for NPR. It’s a good listen.
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Tags: ALL BLOGS, BEN'S BLOGS
November 5th, 2007 at 1:45 pm
I think the problem most artists have when they get further into success and creative freedom, is that they don’t know when their albums have one song too many. I mean sure, you want to give your fans more for their money, but I’d rather have an album with 9 songs that totally blows my mind than a two-disc album with 34 songs that leaves me feeling overwhelmed.