album review: in your honor, the foo fighters
In Your Honor - The Foo Fighters, 2005
track listing:
disk 1 (rock):
1) In Your Honor
2) No Way Back
3) Best of You
4) DOA
5) Hell
6) The Last Song
7) Free Me
8) Resolve
9) The Deepest Blues Are Black
10) End Over End
disk 2 (acoustic):
1) Still
2) What If I Do?
3) Miracle
4) Another Round
5) Friend of a Friend
6) Over and Out
7) On the Mend
8) Virginia Moon
9) Cold Day in the Sun
10) Razor
hi, i'm lacey, and i'm a first-time reviewer for topfive_reviews. i'm also a foo fighters addict, and i got their newest album today via my roommate (kyzen) who is a computer geek in the highest, most honorable sense of the phrase. i've been looking forward to the release of in your honor since i heard about it in february or march. i even wrote it down in my daytimer. (it's june 14th, for those of you not as interested as i am. as if one could forget the foo fighters.)
that said, my biases in reviewing this album are these:
1) i believe with my whole being that the colour and the shape is the best album ever, by any group in any genre. so in your honor had a lot to live up to for me.
2) dave grohl is god, in my opinion, and i would do anything he wanted me to do.
overall, i think that this album is right in line with the musical sense that the foo fighters have displayed over their 11 years as a band. their first album (self-titled) was experimental, edgy, youthful, and full of short bursts of energy--but their stamina seemed to be lacking. stamina and patience seems to improve over the course of their albums, and in your honor shows just how patient the guys can be with themselves, with their instruments, with their practice and implementation, and with other musicians they work with in the industry. the guys are growing up, and so am i, i suppose. most of the tracks on this release are between 3 and 6 minutes apiece, aside from the not-so-good-anyway "hell" on the rock disk, which tops out at 2 minutes or so. they seem to have reined in a few of the overwrought solos and last-song breakouts that they've had in their last albums to tighten up their in-song guitar solos and overall musical quality.
the first disk starts out with a faraway-sounding dave grohl yell-singing (as is his wont), "can you hear me? hear me screaming?" and the drums back him up with a majestic sixteenth-note run around the skins. it builds such wonderful tension and introduces the album's theme of puppy-dog rock (dave's married these days; he's not as much of a cynic as he was in "stacked actors"), but it doesn't go overboard and prematurely reach its peak. the rest of the first disk dips down into typical foo fighter basic rock feel, up again into poppy but sexy "best of you", quickly over "hell", and into somewhat experimental 3/4 and 6/8 pieces that focus on dave's voice and lyrics as well as show off the mature harmonies he and chris shiflett create. each song has its own unique dynamic quality--sudden stops, abrupt drops in texture and volume, and quick changes from melodic dave to yelling dave and back. my favorite track on the first disk is "the deepest blues are black" because i think it shows off dave's voice the best of the rock tracks, it's in 6/8 (which i have a soft spot in my ear for), and it sounds the most like the foo fighters i know and love--there is very little compromising i have to do to listen to this song.
the second disk is different from, but not necessarily better than, the rock disk. unlike the first disk, i wouldn't turn to this half of the album for an energy burst, and i'd probably listen to it mostly on rainy days or when i'm feeling generally down or if i'm making out with someone (and thinking of dave grohl). musically, though, it's spectacular--taylor hawkins, the drummer, makes an appearance on lead vocals on "cold day in the sun," and norah jones backs dave up on "virginia moon." in addition, the four-piece band expands its horizons to include not only different feels (such as jazz and samba), but also the new textures of background string sections, pianos (one played by norah jones), and harmonicas. lyric-wise, the content of the songs reaches beyond the precedent-implied boundaries of male-female relationships to touch on male friendships/relationships, stories (think ben folds), images, moments, and scenes--this half of the album seems more concrete in terms of metaphor and imagery, which is a strong indication of the guys' collectively and individually increasing maturity levels. to me, it seems like they're beginning to understand how to convey their sense of the world both musically and lyrically, and that shows most clearly in the acoustic disk.
overall, i give this album an A-. i would recommend fewer vague, imageless adjectives and cliche phrases ("no one's getting out of here alive"? come on, you kids can do better than that) in the first disk--though the second disk very nearly redeems the whole album's lyrical quality. stronger poetics would raise my grade for this album to an A, maybe an A+. but that's really all i'd recommend. their overall musicianship is right on, and i am thoroughly impressed. and i will buy the cd on tuesday when it comes out, even though i'm poor. and i will buy tickets whenever they come to denver to perform, even though i will still be poor then.