Hello there!
Here I sit, exhausted and thoughtless after a week of shining my lights at their brightest. New job, new pressures, new sense of fatigue. Like I wrote yesterday, doing the same sort of thing for more than a year brings about a mental complacency. Doing new things, consistently, breaks that mental rut. It also fatigues the mind. Being on your toes and trying to adapt and be on your best behavior is tiring after an hour, let alone 50. For example, you have no idea how many insignificant yet telling spelling errors I've made in just this paragraph. Thank goodness for the little red line beneath my mistakes. Since I am clearly at the end of my rope I'll just write a bit about someone else's before I flop into bed.
I've certainly written before about my love of the Foo Fighters and the earnest, unpretentious music they make. As a modern band they've done an amazing thing - they've continued to make album after phenomenal album, a continuous streak of amazing rock music. While I certainly dug their last outing, the sprawling and diverse 'Echoes, Silence, Patience + Grace', my better half loved it even more. It was all I could do to pry the actual, physical CD out of her car and sneak it up to my hard drive. As much as I enjoyed it, though, I was kind of hoping they'd get back to form on their next record. To my pleasant surprise it turned out that's what the band had set out to do on their next endeavor.
While I would love to tell you more about 'Wasting Light' in its entirety, I once again am succumbing to the fact that my better half is so in love with this band that I haven't been able to weasel the CD (again, physical copies!) out of her car. Due to our separate commutes (me bus, she car) I haven't had a chance to really take the whole thing in. Side note - physicality seems to be a theme on this album, as it not only was recorded on tape in Grohl's garage, but her copy of the CD came with an actual section of the master tapes it was recorded on. A nice touch.
The lead single, though? Fantastic.
'Rope' is a slice of pure, guitar driven rocknroll. It's an interesting move on the band's part, as well. The first time I heard the single on the radio I honestly didn't think it was them. From the jangly, spacey chords that open the track, it barely even sounds like the Foo Fighters we all know and love. I had almost tuned the song out, my mind somehow associating it with 80s New Wave like Flock of Seagulls or something. Like, GTA: Vice City popped into my head and I don't quite know why. Anyway, the song builds from there, piece by piece, until the verses are a series of overlapping, rhythmically complicated dynamics. The melody is both infectious and a bit hard to listen to, like a sour candy, if that makes any sense. As the tune builds into the chorus it shifts from the 80s to the 90s, becoming an insanely catchy bit of guitars and wailing the post-grunge rockers do so well. I'm sure you'd recognize it the moment you hear it, Dave Grohl wailing "Gimme some rope, I'm coming loose - I'm hanging on you!"
I'm willing to bet there are some fantastic cuts on this album, if only I could hear them. Someday I'll snatch the album out of my better half's car and secret it away to my headphones to study in earnest. Until then I'll have to to keep myself content with this excellent, hard driving tune. It's good to know that after 15 years a band like this can keep pushing themselves to be creative and energetic. I look forward to hearing more from them.
Here I sit, exhausted and thoughtless after a week of shining my lights at their brightest. New job, new pressures, new sense of fatigue. Like I wrote yesterday, doing the same sort of thing for more than a year brings about a mental complacency. Doing new things, consistently, breaks that mental rut. It also fatigues the mind. Being on your toes and trying to adapt and be on your best behavior is tiring after an hour, let alone 50. For example, you have no idea how many insignificant yet telling spelling errors I've made in just this paragraph. Thank goodness for the little red line beneath my mistakes. Since I am clearly at the end of my rope I'll just write a bit about someone else's before I flop into bed.
I've certainly written before about my love of the Foo Fighters and the earnest, unpretentious music they make. As a modern band they've done an amazing thing - they've continued to make album after phenomenal album, a continuous streak of amazing rock music. While I certainly dug their last outing, the sprawling and diverse 'Echoes, Silence, Patience + Grace', my better half loved it even more. It was all I could do to pry the actual, physical CD out of her car and sneak it up to my hard drive. As much as I enjoyed it, though, I was kind of hoping they'd get back to form on their next record. To my pleasant surprise it turned out that's what the band had set out to do on their next endeavor.
The lead single, though? Fantastic.
'Rope' is a slice of pure, guitar driven rocknroll. It's an interesting move on the band's part, as well. The first time I heard the single on the radio I honestly didn't think it was them. From the jangly, spacey chords that open the track, it barely even sounds like the Foo Fighters we all know and love. I had almost tuned the song out, my mind somehow associating it with 80s New Wave like Flock of Seagulls or something. Like, GTA: Vice City popped into my head and I don't quite know why. Anyway, the song builds from there, piece by piece, until the verses are a series of overlapping, rhythmically complicated dynamics. The melody is both infectious and a bit hard to listen to, like a sour candy, if that makes any sense. As the tune builds into the chorus it shifts from the 80s to the 90s, becoming an insanely catchy bit of guitars and wailing the post-grunge rockers do so well. I'm sure you'd recognize it the moment you hear it, Dave Grohl wailing "Gimme some rope, I'm coming loose - I'm hanging on you!"
