Foo Fighters
Foo Fighters

THE REVIEW

As we all know, Nirvana basically no longer exist: I say "basically" because, from time to time, sporadic reunions occur for exceptional events, with questionable female performers at the microphone where Kurt Cobain’s voice once was. Even before the band split up, drummer Dave Grohl had already started composing and recording his own music: this gave rise to the Late! project, still heavily indebted to the Nirvana sound, though you could already notice something different emerging, and some tracks would later become part of Dave’s next creation, the Foo Fighters.

It is in this context that their debut should be seen—their self-titled 1995 album, practically a solo work by Grohl (the Sunny Day Real Estate musicians would join only afterward), which laid the foundations for so-called post-grunge. This is a rather dubious merit, considering that many post-grunge bands have the artistic weight of a fart; however, for me, the deep beauty of this album is beyond question. Foo Fighters already displays a marked radio-friendly attitude, catchy but with a compositional coherence that would partly be lost on the second album, which is decidedly more hit or miss. A debut that starts from grunge and then transforms it with innovative solutions and then-unusual chords—just listen to the chorus of Weenie Beenie. The Nirvana influence is still palpable; after all, Grohl had played Alone + Easy Target to Kurt, who kissed him on the forehead and told him he wouldn’t be the only writer in the band anymore—a suggestion Dave declined. The influence is evident in songs like Good Grief or For All the Cows, which feature a chorus much sharper and punchier than the verses, a trademark Nirvana quality, or in the relatively secondary importance given to the lyrics, used essentially as a counterpoint, just like Cobain did.

If the placid Big Me has become one of the anthems of the '90s, the two masterpieces of the album are X-Static and Exhausted: the former sublimely fuses grunge and shoegaze and is crafted with great artistic skill, with Grohl’s signature drums kept subdued at first only to scratch at the end, while Exhausted is a true musical narrative, with those nineties-style distortions that couldn’t be more emblematic of that decade.

This could well be the best chapter in the Foo Fighters’ discography; the following album, The Colour and The Shape, is already more stadium-rock oriented and perhaps has more memorable songs, like the immortal Everlong, but also suffers from bigger lows. Thirty years of a career with inevitable ups and downs, with the latest, excellent But Here We Are firmly among their very best; thirty years during which the legendary drummer Taylor Hawkins passed away, but Grohl’s daughter Violet—so it seems—will soon be releasing music under her own name. Thirty years in which the Foo Fighters have become one of the world’s most famous and acclaimed rock bands, much to the dismay of the radical-chic haters, and I’m certain their next album will still kick ass.

Until next time.