Foo Fighters – Concrete and Gold

Hard Rock

64%

I’m a big believer that albums need a reason behind them. There needs to be a connection, no matter how small. Something that says that this collection of songs belong together and have a common feel to them. For all its flaws, 2014’s Sonic Highways had that down, whereas Concrete and Gold just feels thrown together like some collection of odds and ends. You wouldn’t mind so much if they were still great songs in their own right, the Foos have always been a singles band after all. However there’s nothing here that even lives up to Sonic Highways standards, nevermind being worthy of joining their extensive catalogue of big hits. The closest they come on this latest effort is the bluesy stomp of ‘The Sky Is A Neighborhood’.

This is very much a paint by numbers affair. I wonder perhaps whether after making an ambitious album like Sonic Highways and falling a little short of the mark, they reined themselves in a little and settled for something predictable, and made an album in autopilot. It’s not a bad album, there’s a lot worse thing to listen to out there, but there’s not much here for anyone besides the most hardcore fans. It shows a sense of complacency, as though the band are no longer interested in pushing themselves. The Foos are held up as one of the finest modern rock bands, and Dave Grohl hailed as one of the few remaining “rock gods”, and with that in mind it’s hard not to feel that they can do a lot better.