I'd read a few bad reviews for this one, so I was skeptical, but it's a really solid album. I think the thing reviewers are doing is trying to compare it to their last albums. Admittedly, it's not quite as good as The Colour and the Shape or There Is Nothing Left to Lose, but those two are pretty much perfect, at least in my opinion. To put it another way, those two are five-star albums, whereas this one's four-star. By no means bad, but just not quite as great as their previous releases.
Anyway, the gimmick on this one (called "In Your Honor" by the way) is that it's a double-disc, the first being very heavy, heavier than their normal stuff, and the second being mostly acoustic, very light stuff. While the heavier album is really good, one of the best things about the Foo Fighters is their ability to mix really soft music styles to really heavy music. Without that aspect, the music suffers a little. The album feels mostly like a big buildup with no payoff. That said, "The Best of You" and "Resolve" are both awesome, awesome songs.
The second disc is really the bread and butter here. Dave Grohl has a unique way of playing that mixes really odd chords with simple power chords that works really well here, much better than I would have thought. The standout track here, for me, was "Friend of a Friend", which sounds like an ode to Kurt Cobain, though a lot of people think that a lot about Grohl's lyrics (I just found out that "My Hero" was about Cobain, which makes perfect sense now that I think about it). I believe Rolling Stone mentioned this song was a great companion piece to Nirvana's "All Apologies" and it's true. In fact, the majority of the disc is very reminiscent of Nirvana's Unplugged album.
Overall, the album is very good, the lighter one having a slight edge over the heavier one. My favorite album is still There is Nothing Left to Lost, but this one's pretty awesome.
Anyway, the gimmick on this one (called "In Your Honor" by the way) is that it's a double-disc, the first being very heavy, heavier than their normal stuff, and the second being mostly acoustic, very light stuff. While the heavier album is really good, one of the best things about the Foo Fighters is their ability to mix really soft music styles to really heavy music. Without that aspect, the music suffers a little. The album feels mostly like a big buildup with no payoff. That said, "The Best of You" and "Resolve" are both awesome, awesome songs.
The second disc is really the bread and butter here. Dave Grohl has a unique way of playing that mixes really odd chords with simple power chords that works really well here, much better than I would have thought. The standout track here, for me, was "Friend of a Friend", which sounds like an ode to Kurt Cobain, though a lot of people think that a lot about Grohl's lyrics (I just found out that "My Hero" was about Cobain, which makes perfect sense now that I think about it). I believe Rolling Stone mentioned this song was a great companion piece to Nirvana's "All Apologies" and it's true. In fact, the majority of the disc is very reminiscent of Nirvana's Unplugged album.
Overall, the album is very good, the lighter one having a slight edge over the heavier one. My favorite album is still There is Nothing Left to Lost, but this one's pretty awesome.
