If you’re going to throw yourself into the local culture while out of town, don’t drown out all the flavoring with hot sauce you brought from home. In the third episode of Sonic Highways, the new namesake HBO show documenting the making of the new Foo Fighters record across eight music-landmark cities and their accompanying stories, frontman and project mastermind Dave Grohl pointedly implores his bandmates to avoid absorbing too much of the local sound. They oblige, and led by Grohl’s boyish ebullience, completely Foo down the influence.
What results is stadium rock that blends into the rest of the Foo Fighters catalogue like an algorithm of the band’s creative design. It doesn’t peel back the skin and stroke the nerves, and rarely penetrates the heart. It’s certainly not a failure, as the FF energy works within an airtight focused circuit, working together on songs, an obvious go-team mindset evidenced through the docu-series. And as a companion piece to the HBO show, it’s a magnificently woven soundtrack. But there is a missing core, a lacking consistency of soul that not even producer Butch Vig can synthesize.
Vig’s contributions are vital to the sound, a crisp grandiosity that works best within the Foos’ anthem rockers. But these songs are not anthemic. The material feels packed into a pre-existing idea, perhaps an eight-episode HBO series order, like a t-shirt that fits far too tightly.
The HBO show is brilliant, the greatest takeaway from this entire experience. The band spent months crisscrossing the nation, pulling vital music-history narratives from the living legends that spawned the styles, stories and stardom of their locality. It’s a fanboy indulgence to see the guys work out their parts, finding the right sound for each section. But time and again we see Grohl counter the entire idea of the mission by insisting that the band remain true to their own sound, relegating the resultant music to soundtrack status. Grohl simply didn’t allow the different environments to affect his own band’s music in ways that would’ve truly had a tidal impact on the sound. Instead, we pull regional essence and reference almost entirely from I-see-what-you-did-there lyrical tributes scrawled across the screen at each episode’s conclusion, with quotes and conversational nugs from the preceding episode woven into the song as the band performs the track of its locality.
Looking Back: Foos Get Nude & Goofy in ‘Hot Buns’ Video
In other words, without a road map you’re blind on the Highways. It’s damn near impossible to establish where the constellations of influence connect from one track to the next, because the sonic references barely register as tokenistic influence. “Something From Nothing” was a promising suggestion of expansion, an explosive percussion finale getting the blood racing after some refreshingly non-Foo funky organ runs. Joan Jett is featured on the closing, passionate near-redeemer “I Am a River,” but you can’t hear her at all. The urgent but of “The Feast and the Famine” could easily qualify for inclusion on The Colour and The Shape.. but where are Bad Brains? Taylor’s drums are magnificent, particularly in the breakdown, but the D.C. go-go drum flare barely registers. The impressive dynamic-morphing “Congregation” needs a lot more of that promising Zac Brown fingerpicking flavor. The New Orleans Preservation Jazz Band seems to be watching the clock from three rooms away on “In the Clear,” which is Foo pop-drama for bland dorm room mixtapes. Look for it on radio as the promotion cycle grinds on.
Then there’s the inexcusable “What Did I Do/God As My Witness,” a misstep of gut-wrenching spoiled cheese. “What did I do to deserve you? “What can I do to preserve you?” Are you serious? “What can I do to conserve you?” For fuck’s sake. This is the worst song Dave Grohl’s ever written.
Foos Drop Spoof Law-Firm Ad on Letterman
“Outside,” however, hits all the right marks right out of the gate. It sounds fresh, passionate, it grabs you… the formula is right, an ode to Los Angeles and the deserts due East, where Josh Homme’s world birthed a new rock design. And Joe Walsh is in here too, on the appropriately spacious solo. Bt it’s hard to discern without the televised road map.
When you pull individual landmarks and iconic buildings from various cities and make a composite cityscape of it all, as seen on Sonic Highways’ front cover, the result is a mashup metropolis without individual culture or a discernible identity of its own. This is the home Grohl and friends have made for their eight album. It’s a nice place to visit, and the guided tour is a must, but it’s not a town you’d want to live in.
