Early last year, Foo Fighters charismatic drummer Taylor Hawkins died following a drug overdose. Shortly afterwards, Dave Groh’s mother, Virginia, also passed away. Both figures loomed large in Foo Fighters lore, and their unexpected passing has cajoled the group into making their most urgent and impassioned music in at last a decade.
But as much as the songs on ‘But Here We Are’, the band’s 11th album, are very specifically about Taylor and Virginia, they also have to be about neither at all. Foo Fighters songs, by their very nature, are designed to be applicable to no-one exactly, and therefore everyone. Foo Fighters music comes alive in the context of Stadium Rock; and when you’re playing Stadium Rock, you can’t afford to alienate the cheap seats. As a consequence, ‘But Here We Are’ is filled with vague signifiers like ‘waitin for the storm to pass, waitin on the side of the glass’ and greeting card sentiments like ‘I gave you my heart’. You’ll find Moon/June rhymes like ‘are you well? I can’t tell’ and cliches like ‘forever young and free.’ And yet ‘But Here We Are’ is unexpectedly powerful. In spite of the cookie cutter writing and predictable execution the album feels alive. It’s hard not to be moved, particularly if you’ve invested anything in this group over the years. This is, to use another cliche, a return to form record but it’s a return to the form you forgot Dave Grohl was capable of. Foo Fighters have become so reliable, their music so capable, you’d almost forgotten that they were capable of being this electric.
The record’s core topic – grief – gives the record a focus that some of their albums have lacked. But despite the gravity of the theme, the record never wallows or drags. It’s enlivened by loss in a way that feels very typically Dave Grohl-like. ‘But Here We Are’ foregrounds everything that made Foo Fighters a success in the first place; catchy melodies underlined by thick, bright stokes of guitar; piercingly gruff vocals that could belong to no one else but Dave Grohl; frantic drumming (provided by Dave himself) that wants to corrode the very earth under your feet. If you’ve heard ‘My Hero’ or ‘Everlong’ or ‘All My Life’ then these songs will instantly make sense to you.
This is Rock music that doesn’t need a prefix or suffix. It’s occasionally heavy but never metal. It’s occasionally alternative but never Indie. Its emotive but never Emo. It’s got a grove but couldn’t be called groovy. It’s solid, well built rock music that keeps the dream of the 90s alive. That was a time when the umbrella of alt-rock could incoperate everything from shoegaze to grunge and sell it on MTV for a mainstream audience; a time when ambition and accessibility weren’t mutually exclusive. In 2023 there are virtually no groups like Foo Fighters left, let alone ones that could sell out Wembley Stadium. That puts the once daggy Foo Fighters in the somewhat surreal position of being outliers – multi-platinum outliers but outliers nonetheless.
Which would be immaterial if the music were as boring and stuffy as the songs found on the group’s past three records. But ‘But Here We Are’ is the platonic ideal of what a Foo Fighters record should sound like in 2023. It doesn’t always work flawlessly – at least half the songs feel slightly forgettable – but when it does, the band create a real impact. Lead singles ‘Rescued’ and ‘Under You’ in particular are two of the most rousing and reassuring songs released all year. Rather than being a full stop, the awful passing of Taylor Hawkins has brought the group he loved back to life in a way that restores your faith in not just Foo Fighters but Rock music in general.
7.5/10
Pop goes the Weasel 