Nov. 07--Dave Grohl has developed a reputation for reliability with Foo Fighters. Others may call it predictability. Unlike, say, Jack White, who typically works within a similar guitar-bass-drums format but is prone to more audacious experiments, Grohl doesn't color outside the margins all that much. That consistency gives his seven previous albums an increasingly homogenous feel.
The eighth Foo Fighters album, "Sonic Highways" (RCA), hints at something different. It was designed as a multi-media, multi-studio extravaganza: Grohl and bandmates Taylor Hawkins, Nate Mendel, Chris Shiflett and Pat Smear recorded a song apiece in eight cities with local musicians sitting in, and Grohl directed an eight-part cable-TV series documenting each session. The series, so far, has been excellent. But if the idea was for Foo Fighters to pick up some of the vibe, musical and otherwise, in locales such as Chicago, Austin and Nashville, it doesn't really work. An innocent listener wouldn't have any clue that "In the Clear" was recorded in New Orleans, even though the Preservation Hall Jazz Band adds some horns, or that "Congregation" came to life in Nashville, even with Zac Brown adding some guitar.
Grohl drops a few local references into the lyrics to remind his fans, or perhaps himself, where the heck he recorded a particular song: a nod to the Chicago fire in "Something from Nothing" from Steve Albini's North Side studio, a glance at the race riots on 14th Street in Washington, D.C., for "The Feast and the Famine." But otherwise, the tracks sound like they could've unobtrusively fit on one of the Foo Fighters previous albums, a sturdy but unremarkable mix of hard rock with a hint of ballad-singer introspection.
A few arrangements try to veer off script, though not always for the better: "Something from Nothing" provides a fresh reminder that a rock band trying to play funk is rarely a good idea. Keyboards throw reflective textures into "Congregation," the two-part "Where Did I Go?/God as My Witness" and "Subterranean," but all of these songs are so slow developing that they suggest Grohl's ambitions outran his ability to write a memorable melody. "I Am a River" is longer still, a seven-minute slog to a string-swept finale that tries to justify itself as an anthem, but only calls attention to its repetitiveness.
Twenty years deep into its career, Foo Fighters could've used a bit of a shake-up, if not a makeover, to re-energize its music. But "Sonic Highways" provides little more than window-dressing on business as usual.
Sonic Highways
Foo Fighters
2 stars (out of 4)
greg@gregkot.com
