Album Details

• Artist: Foo Fighters
• Album: Echoes Silence Patience & Grace
• Label: RCA / Roswell
• Year of Release: 2007
• ME Rating:
• Reviewed by: MusicCritic on 2011-04-15

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There are few bands who have churned out arena-ready rock anthems as consistently as the Foo Fighters, and yet somehow, the Foos have managed to avoid the criticism faced by many of their peers - and make no mistake, the four-chord rock bands that share the top of the charts with Dave Grohl are the band's peers.

Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace is every bit as straightforward as the rest of band's catalogue - if anything, the experimentation has been toned down from 2005's In Your Honor. It's getting hard to tell at this point if Grohl's predictable delivery is even sincere - his trademark howl is awkwardly shoe-horned into 'Let it Die,' and the acoustic treatments of 'Stranger Things Have Happened' and 'Come Alive' are a little too derivative of Led Zeppelin to be considered reverent.

As has been the rule on recent Foo releases, the band is undeniably at their best when they stray from the formula. 'Summer's End' is a terrific alt-country homage, praying for “cherry wine and moonshine,” and is the most poignant argument that the band's comfort zone is growing stale.

Ten years later, nothing on Echoes has the urgency or energy of the band's classic, The Colour and the Shape. The band's death grip on arena rock is impressive, but the artistry of which they're capable is suffering for it.

Nathan Atnikov

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