The Foo Fighters shifted from fresh and exciting to dependably decent somewhere around their third album, and that’s where they’ve stayed since then. That’s not to say that leader Dave Grohl doesn’t still occasionally write some great songs, or that their albums are ever anything approaching bad. But there really aren’t any surprises left for the band’s sixth album, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, which is expectedly listenable and sporadically exciting but nothing more.
One of Grohl’s strengths is crafting a top-notch balls-out rock song, and he does that a few times here, notably on the lead-off track “The Pretender” and the cheekily titled “Cheer Up, Boys (Your Make-Up Is Running),” although they don’t rank up with classic Foo rockers like “I’ll Stick Around” or “Monkey Wrench.” Better are the more subdued, poppy numbers, like “Long Road to Ruin” and the shambling, piano-driven “Statues,” probably the best track on the album, as well as the least Foo-like.
After the messy sprawl of 2005’s double album In Your Honor, Echoes is more concise and thus more satisfying, with a few quiet moments that recall Honor’s acoustic disc but don’t slow the album’s momentum. The pretty instrumental “Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners” is a nice showcase for Grohl’s guitar skills, but “Stranger Things Have Happened” is merely lugubrious, like the worst acoustic moments on Honor.
The ratio is about the same for the rockers; at this point, Grohl has really perfected his formula, and he proves it more times than necessary on this album. Still, without the stark loud/quiet division that often made Honor sound forced, Echoes is actually more diverse and certainly more cohesive, and taken as a whole it’s, well, dependably decent.
FOO FIGHTERS
Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace
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