FEATURE:
Second Spin
Foo Fighters - Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace
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ON 25th March...
Taylor Hawkins of Foo Fighters died aged fifty. Their legendary drummer, there is still shock and disbelief in the air! He died whilst the band were on tour in South America. I am not sure whether the band will continue, or whether they will recruit a new drummer once they have had sufficient time to grieve and reflect. A band who have released some classic albums, there are a few in their cannon that did not get as much love as they deserved. One such album is the underrated Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace. Released on 25th September, 2007, it is the U.S. band’s sixth studio album. With some incredible drumming and backing vocals from Taylor Hawkins, this is not only an album reserved for Foo fans. I am not a big fan of the band, yet I really like Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace and feel more people should hear it. It is unfortunate that some people and reviewers wrote off the album or did not score it high. There were some positive reviews for a fascinating and varied album. This is what NME observed in their review:
“There’s a genuinely heartwarming story about the genesis of ‘The Ballad Of The Beaconsfield Miners’, too – a gentle, spiraling instrumental acoustic interlude that crops up unexpectedly and apropos of nothing towards the end of the album. It goes something like this: following the tragic collapse of the Beaconsfield mine in Tasmania last May, one of the trapped miners requested an iPod fully stocked with Foos tunes to be lowered down to him to get him through the whole harrowing experience. When he heard of the miner’s request, Grohl, being the doyen of decency that he is, sent the two men a note that read, “Though I’m halfway around the world right now, my heart is with you both, and I want you to know that when you come home, there’s two tickets to any Foos show, anywhere, and two cold beers waiting for you.” Some rock stars probably would’ve fobbed them off with an autograph. Via fax.
Of the quieter moments, there are two clear standouts: ‘Statues’ sounds very much like Grohl’s paean to his newfound domestic bliss (“We’re just ordinary people, you and me/Time will turn us into statues/Eventually”). It’s built around cascading piano chords and soaring, country-esque guitar licks that are so gorgeous, they made us weep like a little girl when we drunkenly heard it for the first time. Oh, alright, we weren’t drunk. Meanwhile, the hymn-like ‘Home’ – the album’s closer – begins just as sparsely, only Dave, a solitary piano and his ruminations on wanting to get off the road and back home, before turning into a full-blown, clenched-fist, lighters-aloft anthem. It’s simple stuff, but done incredibly well.
There are take-it-or-leave-it moments, of course; ‘Stranger Things Have Happened’ sounds like a bluesy acoustic afterthought and should’ve been saved for a B-side, while the plodding, aimless stadium-rock-by-numbers of ‘Summer’s End’ is almost as dull and uninspiring as its title. But by and large this is as consistent a record as the Foo Fighters have ever made. Neither as instantaneously radio-friendly as ‘There Is Nothing Left To Lose’ nor as self-absorbed as ‘In Your Honor’, it’s the record the Foo Fighters have always threatened to make. Foo Fighters albums are like a box of Quality Street; everyone has a favourite. This one is ours”.
Featuring two of the Foo Fighters’ best songs, The Pretender and Long Road to Ruin, there are two anthems there. A lot of the deeper cuts are really interesti9ng and worth some time. This is what AllMusic said in a more mixed review:
“It's not quite right to say that the Foo Fighters only have one sound, but why does it always feel like the group constantly mines the same sonic vein? Even on 2007's Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace -- their sixth album and first with producer Gil Norton since their second, 1997's The Colour and the Shape -- the Foos feel familiar, although the group spends some palpable energy weaving together the two sides of their personality that they went out of their way to separate on 2005's In Your Honor, where they divided the set into a disc of electric rockers and a disc of acoustic introspection. Here, the Foos gently slide from side to side, easing from delicate fingerpicked folk (including "Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners," an instrumental duet between Dave Grohl and guitarist Kaki King) to the surging, muscular hard rockers that have been the group's modern rock radio signature. Echoes never lingers too long in either camp, as it's sequenced with a savvy professionalism that only veteran rockers have. That sense of craft is evident in all the songs, whether it's the subtly sly suite of the opening "The Pretender" -- after a slow build, it crashes into a crushing riff into a chorus, building to a typically insistent chorus before taking a slightly surprising bluesy boogie detour on the bridge -- or the sweet melodic folk-rock "Summer's End," a song as warm and hazy as an August evening.
"Summer's End" is one of the unassailable highlights here, and all the rest of the truly memorable tunes on Echoes share its same, strong melodic bent, particularly "Statues," a wide-open, colorful anthem that feels as if it's been resurrected from a late-'70s AOR playlist. These songs place the melody at the forefront and also have a lighter feel than the rockers, which are now suffering from a dogged sobriety. For whatever reason, Dave Grohl has chosen to funnel all of his humor out of the Foo Fighters' music and into their videos or into his myriad side projects. When Grohl wants to rock for fun, he runs off and forms a metal band like Probot, or he'll tour with Queens of the Stone Age or record with Juliette Lewis. When it comes to his own band, he plays it too straight, as almost every rocker on Echoes -- with the notable exception of "Cheer Up Boys (Your Make Up Is Running)," a song that has a riff as nimble as those on the Foos' debut -- is clenched and closed-off, sounding tight and powerful but falling far short of being invigorating. They sound a little labored, especially when compared to the almost effortlessly engaging melodies of the softer songs, the cuts that feel different than the now overly familiar Foo signature sound. And since those cavernous, accomplished rockers are so towering, they wind up overshadowing everything else on Echoes, which may ultimately be the reason why each Foo Fighters album feels kind of the same: Grohl and his band have grown subtly in other areas, but they haven't pushed the sound that came to define them; they've only recycled it. Since this is a sound that's somber, not frivolous, the Foos can sometimes feel like a bit of a chore if they lean too heavily in one direction -- as they do here, where despite the conscious blend of acoustic and electric tunes, the rockers weigh down Echoes more than they should, enough to make this seem like just another Foo Fighters album instead of the consolidation of strengths that it was intended to be”.
A great album that I think has not been given the ratings and acclaim it warrants, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace is one you need to investigate! Featuring some super playing from Taylor Hawkins, and some great songwriting from the band (Dave Grohl, Taylor Hawkins, Nate Mendel and Chris Shiflett), go and check out Foo Fighters’…
BRILLIANT sixth studio album.