#9 — Foo Fighters — Concrete and Gold

This album is really difficult for me to rank. There are some huge highs for me on this record. “Run” is probably my favorite song of the year. It’s everything I love about Foo Fighters. It’s heavy, it’s melodic, Dave screams through the verses, it’s a wall of guitars and drums. It’s just great.

And I really like what they did with the record. I like that it’s not a typical Foo record. It’s a little more groovy (for lack of a better word) with songs like “Make it Right”, and “The Sky is a Neighborhood”. There are some really heavy songs (“La Dee Da”, Run), some mellow songs (“Happily Ever After”, “Dirty Water”), a song that sounds straight out of the 70s (“Sunday Rain” sung by Taylor”). I wouldn’t say any of the songs other than Run are great songs, but I like what they are doing.

I really like “Arrow” which sounds like it should have been on Wasting Light. And “The Line” is a fantastic song and would be among my favorite Foo songs overall.

It feels like this album had a purpose and even though it wouldn’t rank among my favorite albums by them or for the year, I still appreciate what they did here. They are a rock band with no formula. They write what they feel at the time. I’m happy they keep doing different things and not just creating what they think people want to hear. So even though this record isn’t a home run for me, I respect them more after listening to it.