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Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace By: Brian Campbell  |
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 Foo Fighters
Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace
Foo Fighters lead singer/guitarist recently said he almost gave up on music immediately after his former Nirvana bandmate and friend Kurt Cobain died. Thankfully for all of us he didn’t and went on to front the Foo Fighters, one of the best rock bands in a lot of years.
The Foo Fighters for the last handful of years have really been the model of consistency when it comes to contemporary rock music. They have released solid record after solid record, and have another good one on their hands with their latest, Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace.
This new Foo Fighters record is different from almost everything they have released. It is as definite as it is mature, and there is a good chance that this record is the record that can put the Foo’s into the next plateau of rock music.
Some of this record will sound familiar and some of it wont. It is definitely more of a laid back approach than these guys have taken in the past, but don’t take that out of context. For as much of the slower, deeper tracks on this record, there are just as many classic sounding rock fueled tracks. Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace is kicked off with a bang, as the Pretender does it best to wake up your senses with strong guitars and hard pulsating drumming. You know, the Foo Fighters sound that you fell in love with all those years ago? The Foo’s keep it up throughout the next few tracks, Let It Die and Erase Replace, combining great songwriting with soaring, almost anthematic choruses that just urge you to try and sing along. Erase Replace has one of those choruses, and it goes a long a way to being the best hook of Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace and that is saying something because there sure are a lot of them.
It’s almost like this record is a double disc in the way that it is laid out. The first half of the album houses a lot of the mainstream rock songs and the second half of the record has a lot deeper, more mature tracks. Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace does a 180 of sorts at the track Come Alive, as the beginning half of the song is acoustic and slow moving, then it progresses into the rock element of the Foo Fighters music, and the record from here goes in a different direction. Stranger Things Have Happened and Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners find Grohl alone with an acoustic guitar, and Statues and Summers End sound closer to something that should have been released in the late 60’s/early 70’s. The rock picks up in the latter half of But, Honestly, but then quickly subsides for the albums finale, Home.
Grohl is an excellent songwriter and a fantastic guitar player, but still this is a Foo Fighters record. Doesn’t he release his own solo stuff too? A lot of the songs on Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace would have been better fitted for Grohl solo release and not this record. That is what I do not like about this album and where it really lacks for me. I was expected a lot of the wonderful rock mantra that put the Foo’s on the map in the first place, but a lot of Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace ended up being something else entirely.
Grade: B-
Listen To: Erase Embrace, the Pretender |
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