New Foo Fighters album coming 9/25
#1
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New Foo Fighters album coming 9/25
http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/..._id=1003608301
Foo Fighters Let It Rip On Sixth Album
July 06, 2007, 11:50 AM ET
Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.
"It has always been my dream to mix Steely Dan with No Means No," Dave Grohl tells Billboard of the eclectic sound of the sixth Foo Fighters album, tentatively titled "Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace" and due Sept. 25 via RCA. "If anybody is going to do it, I'd love to be that guy."
Indeed, the 12-song set may throw some fans for a loop, as tracks like "Let It Die" and "Erase Replace" make drastic stylistic shifts in a matter of seconds. "There's four-piece rock band sh*t, but then there are songs where the middle sections turn into this mass orchestrated swarm and ridiculous time signatures," Grohl says of the new material.
Among the rockers sure to sizzle in arenas this fall are opener "The Pretender" ("It's a stomping Foo Fighters uptempo song, with a little bit of Chuck Berry in it") and "Cheer Up Boys, Your Makeup Is Running" ("That will make festival grounds stomp really hard").
At the other end of the spectrum, "The Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners" finds Grohl and guest guitarist Kaki King flexing their fingerpicking. "This song is almost banjo-picking style with hammer-ons and pull-offs," Grohl says. "I showed it to her once and she shredded it 10 times better than I've ever played it."
That song was inspired by two Tasmanian miners who were tapped underground for two weeks and, while awaiting rescue, requested an iPod with Foo Fighters music on it to help lift their spirits. Grohl was alerted of the situation by a staffer at the band's Australian record company and wrote a note to the two men.
"I was in tears, man," he recalls. "I said, 'Hey guys, it's Dave. You're in our thoughts and prayers. When you get out, there's two tickets and two cold beers waiting for you wherever you want to see the band.'"
The men were eventually brought to safety, and when one of them came to see the Foos play the Sydney Opera House, "I thought I'd write something for him," Grohl says. "I came up with this little instrumental thing. After the show, we went and got f*ckin' wasted in the hotel bar and I was like, 'Dude, I promise I'm going to put this on the record.'"
After some one-off shows this summer, the Foos will play U.S. gigs in September and October, followed by arenas in the United Kingdom in November and Australia in December. Another U.S. run is on tap for early spring. "The last American tour we did was the one with Weezer [in 2005]," Grohl says. "We need to get back to Fargo and Tulsa -- places like that. We need to bring it all back."
Here is the track list for "Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace":
"The Pretender"
"Let It Die"
"Erase Replace"
"Long Road to Ruin"
"Come Alive"
"Stranger Things Have Happened"
"Cheer Up Boys, Your Makeup Is Running"
"Summer's End"
"The Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners"
"Statues"
"But Honestly"
"Home"
Foo Fighters Let It Rip On Sixth Album
July 06, 2007, 11:50 AM ET
Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.
"It has always been my dream to mix Steely Dan with No Means No," Dave Grohl tells Billboard of the eclectic sound of the sixth Foo Fighters album, tentatively titled "Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace" and due Sept. 25 via RCA. "If anybody is going to do it, I'd love to be that guy."
Indeed, the 12-song set may throw some fans for a loop, as tracks like "Let It Die" and "Erase Replace" make drastic stylistic shifts in a matter of seconds. "There's four-piece rock band sh*t, but then there are songs where the middle sections turn into this mass orchestrated swarm and ridiculous time signatures," Grohl says of the new material.
Among the rockers sure to sizzle in arenas this fall are opener "The Pretender" ("It's a stomping Foo Fighters uptempo song, with a little bit of Chuck Berry in it") and "Cheer Up Boys, Your Makeup Is Running" ("That will make festival grounds stomp really hard").
At the other end of the spectrum, "The Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners" finds Grohl and guest guitarist Kaki King flexing their fingerpicking. "This song is almost banjo-picking style with hammer-ons and pull-offs," Grohl says. "I showed it to her once and she shredded it 10 times better than I've ever played it."
That song was inspired by two Tasmanian miners who were tapped underground for two weeks and, while awaiting rescue, requested an iPod with Foo Fighters music on it to help lift their spirits. Grohl was alerted of the situation by a staffer at the band's Australian record company and wrote a note to the two men.
"I was in tears, man," he recalls. "I said, 'Hey guys, it's Dave. You're in our thoughts and prayers. When you get out, there's two tickets and two cold beers waiting for you wherever you want to see the band.'"
The men were eventually brought to safety, and when one of them came to see the Foos play the Sydney Opera House, "I thought I'd write something for him," Grohl says. "I came up with this little instrumental thing. After the show, we went and got f*ckin' wasted in the hotel bar and I was like, 'Dude, I promise I'm going to put this on the record.'"
After some one-off shows this summer, the Foos will play U.S. gigs in September and October, followed by arenas in the United Kingdom in November and Australia in December. Another U.S. run is on tap for early spring. "The last American tour we did was the one with Weezer [in 2005]," Grohl says. "We need to get back to Fargo and Tulsa -- places like that. We need to bring it all back."
Here is the track list for "Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace":
"The Pretender"
"Let It Die"
"Erase Replace"
"Long Road to Ruin"
"Come Alive"
"Stranger Things Have Happened"
"Cheer Up Boys, Your Makeup Is Running"
"Summer's End"
"The Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners"
"Statues"
"But Honestly"
"Home"
#2
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
wow! Great story about the miners.
Haven't heard the name Nomeansno in quite awhile! Great band. Love their "Wrong" album. Sounds like this album could be interesting, but I'd prefer all out ROCK.
Haven't heard the name Nomeansno in quite awhile! Great band. Love their "Wrong" album. Sounds like this album could be interesting, but I'd prefer all out ROCK.
#6
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Originally Posted by nodeerforamonth
wow! Great story about the miners.
Haven't heard the name Nomeansno in quite awhile! Great band. Love their "Wrong" album. Sounds like this album could be interesting, but I'd prefer all out ROCK.
Haven't heard the name Nomeansno in quite awhile! Great band. Love their "Wrong" album. Sounds like this album could be interesting, but I'd prefer all out ROCK.
The Foos left S. America in the middle of a tour, when they heard that David Letterman's first choice for musical guest was the Foo Fighters, playing one of Dave's favorite song's "Everlong."
#7
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I am so pumped for this...I thought it was shooting for like a november release date, so this is awesome news... we should hear a single in what, like 6-8 weeks from now?
#9
DVD Talk Gold Edition
Originally Posted by the action
"Cheer Up Boys, Your Makeup Is Running"
Such a good title for a song
Such a good title for a song
#11
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Dave Grohl May Be Fond Of String Quartets, But Foo Fighters Haven't Gone Soft
Dave Grohl has been in the rock business for more than 20 years now, and during that time, he's seen many so-called "musical movements" come and go. Thus, he's particularly amused by the current generation of emo-punk acts bounding across stages worldwide. After all, he's been doing this for so long that he remembers emo the first time it came around.
"I have a funny relationship with emo," he said. "I'm from Washington, D.C., and in the mid-'80s, the hardcore scene changed from what it was — Bad Brains and Minor Threat and the Dead Kennedys and MDC — to a bunch of new bands like Rites of Spring and Embrace, which Ian MacKaye was the singer for. Everyone started labeling it 'emo-core.' So I went to Rites of Spring's first show, and it was a revelation. I'd never heard anything like it, and it was a really emotional experience. But in D.C., we all hated that 'emo-core' tag."
It should come as no surprise, then, that Grohl has placed a song called "Cheer Up Boys (Your Make-Up Is Running)" smack-dab in the middle of the Foo Fighters' upcoming Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace album, due September 25. After all, Grohl has always struck us as the kind of rock star who's aware of the inherent silliness of being a rock star — the kind of guy not afraid to take a few potshots at those who take themselves a tad too seriously. So the song must be a sort of piss-take on this current crop of raccoon-eyed emo boys, right?
Wrong.
"The title has nothing to do with the song — it's placed right in the middle of the record, where there's a lot of dark stuff. It's a pretty heavy record. We have a couple bummer tunes," Grohl said. "I felt the album needed something to sit in the center and balance it. So we had this lighthearted song, and I called it 'Cheer Up Boys (Your Make-Up Is Running)' because it seemed like a little ray of hope in the middle of all this despair."
It is statements like that from the normally jovial Grohl that provide the first hint that perhaps Echoes isn't your run-of-the-mill Foo Fighters effort. Building on the musical ground they excavated on 2005's double-discer In Your Honor (see "Dave Grohl: The Gambler") and the foundations laid during the Foos' acoustic tour last year (see "Dave Grohl Gets Personal At Foo Fighters Acoustic Show In Hollywood"), the new album finds the band inhabiting a vast new sonic space, equal parts quiet and loud, refined and raw.
"The acoustic side of In Your Honor was about breaking out of this formula we'd been caged in for years. We wanted to try something new to expand the sound of the band, like a whisper-quiet acoustic song or this wall-of-noise rock stuff and anything in between," he explained. "And the acoustic tour, going out with eight people — I'd never played with strings and Mellotrons and vibes, and we were doing all these new versions of old songs. I realized all this melodic and instrumental potential, like, 'Wow, man. Imagine if we could do this with rock songs.' So I started writing [this new album] with that in mind. Like, 'I'm not scared of a string quartet. I'm not afraid of playing piano.' "
That sonic seriousness is coupled with a newfound heaviness to Grohl's lyrics, which he attributes in part to the birth of his daughter, Violet Maye, last year. And after heading up the band for nearly 13 years, he feels like the Foo Fighters are finally ready to test new terrain, which is why they opted to give their sixth studio effort such a, well, sensitive handle.
"It's tough to name a record," he said. "A lot of bands go into the studio with the title already in place, but we sort of figure it out when we're in there, and when we're done, you try to find this slogan to sum up the whole album. It's strange, especially for an album like this, where it's really diverse and the music is moving in different directions and there are different lyrical themes. So I think it needed a beautiful title, something that represented grace and sound and beauty."
And it is statements like that that might have Foo fans a little worried. Have fatherhood and a newfound appreciation for "arrangements" finally caused Grohl to go soft?
"Not at all. I still listen to Slayer once a week," he said. "But a lot of people who came to see us on our first tour in '95 might have been 22 then, and now they're as old as me.
"It's all about musical exploration," he continued. "We have moments of kick-you-in-the-teeth rock stuff, but there's a lot of power in that lower dynamic too. To be able to get a room to pin-drop silence with an acoustic song that means something is sometimes even more powerful than all the lights and lasers and amps in the world."
MTV.com
Dave Grohl has been in the rock business for more than 20 years now, and during that time, he's seen many so-called "musical movements" come and go. Thus, he's particularly amused by the current generation of emo-punk acts bounding across stages worldwide. After all, he's been doing this for so long that he remembers emo the first time it came around.
"I have a funny relationship with emo," he said. "I'm from Washington, D.C., and in the mid-'80s, the hardcore scene changed from what it was — Bad Brains and Minor Threat and the Dead Kennedys and MDC — to a bunch of new bands like Rites of Spring and Embrace, which Ian MacKaye was the singer for. Everyone started labeling it 'emo-core.' So I went to Rites of Spring's first show, and it was a revelation. I'd never heard anything like it, and it was a really emotional experience. But in D.C., we all hated that 'emo-core' tag."
It should come as no surprise, then, that Grohl has placed a song called "Cheer Up Boys (Your Make-Up Is Running)" smack-dab in the middle of the Foo Fighters' upcoming Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace album, due September 25. After all, Grohl has always struck us as the kind of rock star who's aware of the inherent silliness of being a rock star — the kind of guy not afraid to take a few potshots at those who take themselves a tad too seriously. So the song must be a sort of piss-take on this current crop of raccoon-eyed emo boys, right?
Wrong.
"The title has nothing to do with the song — it's placed right in the middle of the record, where there's a lot of dark stuff. It's a pretty heavy record. We have a couple bummer tunes," Grohl said. "I felt the album needed something to sit in the center and balance it. So we had this lighthearted song, and I called it 'Cheer Up Boys (Your Make-Up Is Running)' because it seemed like a little ray of hope in the middle of all this despair."
It is statements like that from the normally jovial Grohl that provide the first hint that perhaps Echoes isn't your run-of-the-mill Foo Fighters effort. Building on the musical ground they excavated on 2005's double-discer In Your Honor (see "Dave Grohl: The Gambler") and the foundations laid during the Foos' acoustic tour last year (see "Dave Grohl Gets Personal At Foo Fighters Acoustic Show In Hollywood"), the new album finds the band inhabiting a vast new sonic space, equal parts quiet and loud, refined and raw.
"The acoustic side of In Your Honor was about breaking out of this formula we'd been caged in for years. We wanted to try something new to expand the sound of the band, like a whisper-quiet acoustic song or this wall-of-noise rock stuff and anything in between," he explained. "And the acoustic tour, going out with eight people — I'd never played with strings and Mellotrons and vibes, and we were doing all these new versions of old songs. I realized all this melodic and instrumental potential, like, 'Wow, man. Imagine if we could do this with rock songs.' So I started writing [this new album] with that in mind. Like, 'I'm not scared of a string quartet. I'm not afraid of playing piano.' "
That sonic seriousness is coupled with a newfound heaviness to Grohl's lyrics, which he attributes in part to the birth of his daughter, Violet Maye, last year. And after heading up the band for nearly 13 years, he feels like the Foo Fighters are finally ready to test new terrain, which is why they opted to give their sixth studio effort such a, well, sensitive handle.
"It's tough to name a record," he said. "A lot of bands go into the studio with the title already in place, but we sort of figure it out when we're in there, and when we're done, you try to find this slogan to sum up the whole album. It's strange, especially for an album like this, where it's really diverse and the music is moving in different directions and there are different lyrical themes. So I think it needed a beautiful title, something that represented grace and sound and beauty."
And it is statements like that that might have Foo fans a little worried. Have fatherhood and a newfound appreciation for "arrangements" finally caused Grohl to go soft?
"Not at all. I still listen to Slayer once a week," he said. "But a lot of people who came to see us on our first tour in '95 might have been 22 then, and now they're as old as me.
"It's all about musical exploration," he continued. "We have moments of kick-you-in-the-teeth rock stuff, but there's a lot of power in that lower dynamic too. To be able to get a room to pin-drop silence with an acoustic song that means something is sometimes even more powerful than all the lights and lasers and amps in the world."
MTV.com
#14
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Originally Posted by foofighters7
As with every album I cant wait. The Best band playing today. Great live band, great writing, just overall awesome band.
ff7
ff7
#15
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Originally Posted by auto
Really? Do you really think this is the best band playing today?? I can think of two dozen better bands playing today. Not trying to thread cap but just being honest...
#17
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Originally Posted by nodeerforamonth
You know any other bands playing on 7/28/07 that are better?
IMHO, their last album was pretty bad. I guess my expectations are just pretty low for this next one. Hopefully it is a return to form.
#18
DVD Talk Platinum Edition
Well everyone has their own opinions, but saying you know of two dozen bands that are better, just makes me think you have really shitty taste in music. But thats just me. See if you had said, I can think of 2 or 3 bands that are better, thats at least arguable but your statement just sounds stupid and tells me you like alot of crap.
If you dont like them, fine. Im sure I would hate most of your 24 suposed "better" bands playing today.
ff7
If you dont like them, fine. Im sure I would hate most of your 24 suposed "better" bands playing today.
ff7
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Originally Posted by auto
Really? Do you really think this is the best band playing today?? I can think of two dozen better bands playing today. Not trying to thread cap but just being honest...
#20
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Originally Posted by foofighters7
Well everyone has their own opinions, but saying you know of two dozen bands that are better, just makes me think you have really shitty taste in music. But thats just me. See if you had said, I can think of 2 or 3 bands that are better, thats at least arguable but your statement just sounds stupid and tells me you like alot of crap.
If you dont like them, fine. Im sure I would hate most of your 24 suposed "better" bands playing today.
ff7
If you dont like them, fine. Im sure I would hate most of your 24 suposed "better" bands playing today.
ff7
#21
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Originally Posted by DVD Josh
Everyone says this and never posts a list. I'd be curious to see this two dozen bands of yours.
#22
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I would rather listen to these 2 dozen bands than the Foo Fighters
Arcade Fire
The New Pornographers
The Decemberists
The Hold Steady
White Stripes
Radiohead
Muse
Bright Eyes
Islands
The National
Okkervil River
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
The Roots
TV on the Radio
Sigur Ros
The Shins
Manic Street Preachers
Dinosaur Jr.
Dropkick Murphys
The Format
Mutemath
Phoenix
Of Montreal
Arcade Fire
The New Pornographers
The Decemberists
The Hold Steady
White Stripes
Radiohead
Muse
Bright Eyes
Islands
The National
Okkervil River
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
The Roots
TV on the Radio
Sigur Ros
The Shins
Manic Street Preachers
Dinosaur Jr.
Dropkick Murphys
The Format
Mutemath
Phoenix
Of Montreal
#24
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Remember: This is my opinion. Not looking to start arguments on the merits of these bands, just listing twenty that I feel are currently better than the Foo Fighters.
In no particular order:
1. Spoon
2. The National
3. TV on the Radio
4. The Hold Steady
5. The Liars
6. The Arcade Fire
7. The White Stripes
8. Modest Mouse
9. Radiohead
10. The Shins
11. Wilco
12. The Black Keys
13. Mogwai
14. Sigur Ros
15. Wolf Parade
16. The New Pornographers
17. Broken Social Scene
18. Queens of the Stone Age
19. The Silver Jews
20. Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks
In no particular order:
1. Spoon
2. The National
3. TV on the Radio
4. The Hold Steady
5. The Liars
6. The Arcade Fire
7. The White Stripes
8. Modest Mouse
9. Radiohead
10. The Shins
11. Wilco
12. The Black Keys
13. Mogwai
14. Sigur Ros
15. Wolf Parade
16. The New Pornographers
17. Broken Social Scene
18. Queens of the Stone Age
19. The Silver Jews
20. Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks
#25
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Originally Posted by JPRaup
I would rather listen to these 2 dozen bands than the Foo Fighters...