Foo Fighters make best album of career with ‘Wasting Light’

When Kurt Cobain killed himself 17 years ago, it appeared as though the Nirvana legacy would only live on through the music the band recorded during those few years the band existed. But its drummer, Dave Grohl, has kept going with his own band, Foo Fighters, which just released an album nearly every bit as good as “Bleach,” “Nevermind” and “In Utero,” Nirvana’s groundbreaking and monumental albums.


This new album, “Wasting Light,” is the band’s follow-up to its 2007 album, “Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace,” which claimed several Grammys in 2008.

Unlike that album, which featured a balanced mix of rockers and acoustic numbers, this one is pure rock. It opens with Grohl shouting “These are my famous last words! My number’s up, bridges all burned.” And the adrenaline doesn’t stop over the course of 11 songs and 47 minutes.

The next song, the first single, “Rope,” became only the second song to debut atop Billboard’s Rock Songs chart, and with good reason. The hook is probably catchier than the common cold at a school following Christmas break. “Give me some rope, I’m coming loose. I’m hanging on you,” Grohl sings, inspiring me to actually want to give him some rope to help the poor guy.

The third song, “Dear Rosemary,” is my favorite, most likely because it features background vocals by Bob Mould, lead singer of Hüsker Dü, a 1980s punk rock band that never achieved the success it deserved but which influenced many of the biggest “alternative rock” bands of the 1990s, such as Nirvana.

The next song, “White Limo,” is unlike anything else on the album, and in the entire Foo Fighters’ catalog, because it showcases Grohl’s hardcore influences from bands he grew up listening to and playing with while growing up in Washington, D.C.

The midsection of the album features some solid rockers, like “These Days” and “Back & Forth,” but the final two songs, “I Should Have Known” and “Walk” are two of the finest songs in the Foo Fighters discography.

“I Should Have Known” reunites Grohl with Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic, which is the first time the two have performed together on an album since Nirvana’s tragic ending. It’s appropriate the two are on the song together, as it may be about Cobain’s suicide, although it’s probably about a failed relationship with a woman. In either case, the song makes you yearn for more semi-Nirvana reunions.

“Walk,” though, could be the song that helps Foo Fighters sell millions of copies of “Wasting Light.” It’s the type of rock song we may hear on the radio, at bars and in any place with music playing for years to come. In fact, it’s featured in the new “Thor” film, which recently earned $66 million in its opening weekend.

“Wasting Light” is Foo Fighters’ seventh album, and bands are not supposed to make their best ones this late into their careers, especially when the career started in the ashes of a band as legendary as Nirvana.

Hopefully, when the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame considers the band for induction years from now, it’ll remember this accomplishment.
****
Originally published in The Portage County Gazette on Friday, May 13, 2011.