The best of Foo Fighters

If things go right for the band, Foo Fighters might go home with one or two trophies after the Grammy Awards are given out at the Staples Center on Feb. 10. Its latest CD Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace is a nominee for Album of the Year and Best Rock Album. The hit single The Pretender is up for Record of the Year and Best Rock Song while the Foos themselves might just get the Best Hard Rock Performance Award. This is not the Foo’s first experience with the Grammys. Nominations come with almost every new release and the group has already won two Best Rock Album awards. These are for There is Nothing Left to Lose and One by One. But even if it misses out on this upcoming one, there is no question anymore that the 10-year-old Foo Fighters is one of the best bands of our time.

Foo Fighters is also probably one of the most talented and hardworking. I can just imagine how much time the members spend on their music. Nothing is ever mediocre with these guys. Made up of David Grohl on lead vocals, piano, drums and guitar; Chris Shiflett, guitars and background vocals; Nate Mendel,  bass; and Taylor Hawkins, drums, percussion and vocals, the Foos turns out one well-made album after another, each one better than the last.

So this makes Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace its best ever. That is no overstatement. The album is a future classic that is intense, affecting and shows off the band’s wide-ranging musicality and growing maturity. The first single The Pretender is hard and angry rock. Long Road to Ruin is of the old-time arena variety. Summer’s End reminds me of folksy ’70s rock.

Best of all though, who would have thought that Grohl, who once drummed for Kurt Cobain could hit a home run with just his guitar and a metronome in Stranger Things Have Happened. You can now stop thinking of drummers as descendants of Ringo Starr. Grohl has already changed that.

The other cuts in Echoes, and they are all great, are Let It Die, Erase/Replace, Think With, Come Alive, Cheer Up Boys (Your Make-up is Running), Ballad of the Beaconfied Minors, Statues, But Honestly and Grohl’s unbelievably lonely Home, which closes the set.

And while we are on the subject of Foo Fighters and its ability to rein in the music for dramatic effect, this might also be a good time to mention Skin and Bones. This is a live, acoustic album recorded at the Pantages Theater in Los Angeles. You know how pared down recordings show up the inadequacies of performers and their music. It is like putting something under a magnifying glass and you see the warts and other minutiae.

Nothing like that happens here. Truth to tell, the near silence shows up the beauty of Foo Fighters songs and of Grohl’s striking ability to touch the heart of his listener. Of course, given how talented these musicians are, the playing is also excellent.

OK, some fans might be disappointed because there is no Monkey Wrench, This is a Call or Learn to Fly. All My Life, DOA, Have It All or No Way Back are also not included. But there are still lots of others, most especially Everlong, one of the most beautiful rock songs ever written.

Then there are Best of You, Friend of a Friend, Times Like These, February Stars, Skin and Bones, Cold Day in the Sun, Big Me, Another Round, Next Year, My Hero, Walking After You, Over and Out, Razor and the CD’s huge surprise, Marigold. This was a song that Grohl wrote for and was recorded by his former band Nirvana.

Rock icon gets a Globe

Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder’s composition Guaranteed was named Best Original Song at the Golden Globe Awards last week. He wrote Guaranteed for the movie Into the Wild, which was directed by Sean Penn. He bested Despidida by Shakira from Love in the Time of Cholera; Grace is Gone by Clint Eastwood from Grace is Gone; That’s How You Know from Enchanted; and Walk Hard from Walk Hard The Dewey Cox Story. However, Vedder lost out in the Best Original Score category. This was won by Dario Marinelli for Atonement.