Dave Grohl, Rock’s Most Unlikely Elder Statesman

noah | September 25, 2007 12:40 pm
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Every week, we round up the all-important, all-summarizing last sentences of the biggest new-music reviews. Today’s entry is the Foo Fighters’ Echoes Silence Patience & Grace, which comes out today:

• “Like the greats, the Foos have found a way to create their own archetype, with an instinctive feel for what constitutes a killer song. From this point on, ‘Fooey’ will be as august an expression of approbation as ‘Beatlesque.'”[EW] • “These songs are astonishingly easy to listen to, guided by iron notions of form and musical narrative, lifted by a zesty chord, just as they’re threatening to become mundane. If you’re past prom age, there’s a lot of craft here to admire.” [NYT] • “Most of Echoes rails against people who want to hold the singer down (which raises the question: Is anybody — okay, besides Courtney — really trying to oppress Dave Grohl?). The album’s best song is ‘The Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners,’ a bluegrass instrumental that’s an oasis amid the combative bluster. It’s hard to criticize Grohl for his lack of innovation, because he’s never wanted to start a revolution. But at this point, Foo Fighters’ consistency has become predictability, and it threatens to trap them in the modern-rock ghetto, dangerously close to those guys in Hinder.” [Spin] • “With two folksy exceptions, it’s more of the same from one of the planet’s finest hard-rock acts. And since that’s worked famously for 12 years, there’s not much to fault with that.” [Dallas Morning News]

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