Foo Fighters - But Here We Are

Foo Fighters’ story has become devastatingly cyclical. Their very existence is down to loss, having risen from the ashes of Nirvana after Kurt Cobain’s death, but 28 years later, they faced a loss of their own in the form of Taylor Hawkins’ untimely passing. And yet, fifteen months on, they’re still standing. Equally cyclical on their tenth album is its sound, harking back strongly to the Foos’ earliest days with more immediacy than their previous few records, but it’s just as rich, especially where Dave Grohl’s drumming is concerned (unmistakably seeming like an urgent search for catharsis). There’s plenty of stadium-ready gold - opener ‘Rescued’ is made for screaming to the sky, while ‘Under You’ takes flight without feeling weighed down by its grief. But as time goes by, Dave burrows deeper, painting pictures in crushingly direct words (“Are you well? I can’t tell / Do tell,” he asks on ‘Beyond Me’), reaching a harrowing nadir on ten-minute ‘The Teacher’ as he screams “Wake up” over guitars squalling in alarm. The funereal, fragile ‘Rest’ is similarly unsparing – “You can rest now / You will be safe now,” he murmurs, signing off on an album that will follow you for hours, if not days.