Foo Fighters, Sonic Highways - Review

Foo Fighters, Sonic Highways

Unsurprisingly, after twenty years of touring the world and recording seven albums together, being in one of the worlds biggest bands and pumping out record after record can almost be seen to become just another day in the office. For Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters, however, this only opens the doors to new challenges and opportunities for new experiences and adventures.

Sonic Highways, Foo Fighters' eighth album, is new ground for the band as they may have recorded in their own state of the art studio 606, and they may also have recorded in frontman Dave Grohl's garage on tape machines in a clutch back to their familiar analogue over digital past, but had the band composed an entire album made up of eight songs recorded in eight different studios in eight different cities with a week to do each one? Oh, and all the while recording an episode for a documentary in each city to compile together at the end and create a DVD to inform viewers about the history of their favourite bands and the relative cities which nurtured them whilst entertaining with their own antics at the same time? As I said, new ground.
To a band just starting out or on the cusp of their breakthrough, this can seem like quite a task. Fortunately for the veteran touring machine that is the Foo Fighters, they have enough money and experience in the bank to be able to pull this goliath task off with relative ease; Dave Grohl choosing to write the lyrics to the songs out of quotes from the stars of the music past and present who he interviewed seeming to provide the biggest challenge.

Each city results in a new sound for the record, such as 'Congregation' (recorded in Nashville the proclaimed home of gospel) or 'Subterranean' (conceived in Seattle, the centrepoint of Grohl's musical life resulting in his joining of Nirvana and formation of Foo Fighters), yet somehow all manage to still contain that all important 'Foo's sound' which really staples the album as part of their history and not just a sideshow made as a passing fad for television.
Not only does every city bring a new feel, they also bring a new band member. With the guys inviting a big hitter from every city to record a part on the album whether it be Rick Nielsen (Cheap Trick) playing baritone guitar on 'Something from Nothing' - the huge introductory song which follows Dave Grohl's classic algorithm for massive stadium rock tunes, or Joe Walsh (Eagles) laying down a breathtakingly effective minimalist solo on 'Outside', the band never fail to pull out the stops when bringing a seventh man to the band.

However, as optimistic and positive as everyone may have been to the task they took on, I do believe they may have set their sights too high with the publicity and hype this album achieved before release, with fans expecting odes to every city and be purely identifiable and individual to the recording studio used on their journey. This, obviously, cannot be done with sacrificing you're integrity and remaining who you are as a writer of creative media at the end.

As they say, it truly is about the journey and not the destination, as individually the songs on the album are sublime, yet as an entirety the eight songs fall a bit short compared to their past works.
On the brighter side, for twenty years of history and to still be producing such identifiable and original records as this, I think that the pedestal dominated by the Foo Fighters, passed on by legends such as Kiss, The Clash, and AC/DC, from where they can look out amongst a sea of next generation rock bands awaiting their leave in order for them to live in the limelight, shall remain theirs for years to come.