With their newest album, Concrete and Gold, releasing on September 15th, PCB would like to take you through the Foo Fighters’ entire recorded history. We are going to go through the catalogue, album by album, giving you some Foo Fighters history, a take on the albums and a few other tracks from that era that are worth checking out. Follow along and please add your comments below. Today’s offering is their sixth album: Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace.
Learning from their mistakes on In Your Honor, Foo Fighters mixed both electric and acoustic songs together on a single album. Dave Grohl has stated that he set out to make an album similar to The Zombies’ Odyssey and Oracle.
Melding both the acoustic and electric on one album is definitely a much better way to go. In my opinion this should have come prior to doing the double album experiment. However, this still isn’t a perfect album.
Album by Album : Foo Fighters
Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace has some really great songs on it. “The Pretender,” “Let it Die,” “Erase/Replace,” and “Long Road to Ruin” start off the album like a kick in the face (in a good way). These tracks all rock!
Then we hit “Come Alive” which is extremely repetitive. It’s over 5 minutes long, but feels like 30 minutes. It is slow, but then end really builds up to get us ready to rock on the next song.
Wrong. “Stranger Things Have Happened” is another 5 minute slow song, but I do enjoy it. I think the sequencing hurts this song (and the album) the most. Flip this with “Come Alive” and the album has a much better flow at this point.
“Cheer Up Boys (Your Make Up is Running)” is one of the best Foo Fighters songs there is! It’s hard to not love this song. It has that perfect pop-rock sound that gets stuck in your head and makes you want to listen to it over and over again.
“Summer’s End” is a fine song, but it doesn’t grab me much. It’s also way too long for what it is.
This album has the first instrumental Foo Fighters song “Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners.” I appreciate that this was written for the Beaconsfield Miners who were trapped, but it has no place on this album. If it were a single with proceeds going to the miners, that’d be one thing, but it just adds to the slog on the second half of this album.
“Statues” is the last great song on this album. I love this song. It’s everything the other slower songs are trying to be, but actually succeeds.
The final two songs, “But Honestly” and “Home” are fine but don’t have much substance. I’m not always in the mood to listen to them. “Home,” is the weaker of the two, ending the album on a really, really slow and down note.
Hey, Edison didn’t get the lightbulb right on the second try either, but this album is definitely closer than In Your Honor. There are awesome songs on here, but the sequencing ruins this as an album. I never pull this one out and listen to it top to bottom.
Closer but still no cigar. Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace (2007) is a 6 out of 10 stars!
But wait… there’s more!
There are a few more tracks from this era that were left off of the album and were either released as B-Sides or bonus tracks on re-issues.
“Keep the Car Running” (Arcade Fire cover) – This is a song by a band that I could never get in to, but I love this Foo Fighters cover. This is Dave and the gang at the top of their game! I wish this was on the album instead of a few of those clunkers.
Foo Fighters Greatest Hits (2009)
In 2009, after six studio albums, Foo Fighters released a greatest hits album. There were two new songs on this album (produced by Butch Vig) and they both deserve to be on it!
“Wheels” – This song is a really great rock song. I can’t describe it better than that. It’s about new beginnings after a rough patch and it seems to echo their career a bit at this point.
“Word Forward” – For being about Dave’s friend, Jimmy, who died this song rocks! It’s about regret and loss and coming to terms with it. Taylor’s drums sound fantastic on this song and really capture the raw emotion of Grohl’s voice.
Kyle Dodson is covering the entire Foo Fighters catalogue in the run-up to the release of their ninth studio album, Concrete and Gold, on Roswell Records/ RCA Records, September 15, 2017. Follow along:
Album by Album: Foo Fighters
Foo Fighters
The Colour and the Shape
There Is Nothing Left to Lose
One by One
In Your Honor
Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace
Wasting Light
Sonic Highways
Concrete and Gold
Kyle Dodson is a writer, comedian, Rock Solid Podcast producer, Batman aficionado, facial hair connoisseur, and oxford comma supporter.