949 Foo Fighters - Foo Fighters (1995)

 949 Foo Fighters - Foo Fighters (1995)

Studio album - Grunge Rock



About the Act:

Dave Grohl was the drummer for the band Nirvana. You've probably heard of them, they had that chap Kurt Cobain as front man, the one who died. While with Nirvana, our Dave started to write songs, and to record some demos. He was quite shy about them, and strongly influenced by Kurt's songwriting. 

When Kurt died in 1994, and Nirvana stopped as a result, Dave booked some studio time and recorded some of his songs. He played everything himself, apart from one bit of guest guitar. He then touted the tape around under the name "Foo Fighters" - deliberately using a name that was a plural so that it would seem like it was a band and not just him. He was also not intending to make a big splash, just to have a small run of copies, and stay anonymous. Somehow that didn't happen. The tape got released as an album, he recruited a band to tour the songs and things went on from there. There have been some member changes (but not that many), and they are still going, 9 albums later. 

As a band, they have been very successful, and are particularly known for the humour of their music videos.


About the Album:

So this was the first album, mentioned above, which was recorded almost entirely by Dave Grohl on his own.


My History with this Album:

None


Review:

Well, you can hear the influence of Kurt Cobain's songwriting and musical arrangement. There is the same interesting use of chords and chord sequences that definitely don't follow a standard 3-chord trick. There is the same tendency to use contrasting quiet and heavy/loud sections. There is a lot of distorted guitar that could easily be described as "hard rock", but with an openness to the playing that owes something to the punk/post-punk legacy. The lyrics are sometimes interesting, sometimes less noteworthy, and sometimes not really distinguishable. The vocal delivery varies between singing, mumbling and screeching, the mumbling being similar to Kurt Cobain again.

It's competent, it's interesting. It's quite heavy. It's not as iconic as Nirvana, possibly merely because it is not as well-known. It's not as assured as Nirvana either. It definitely sounds like what it is - the next step in the evolution of grunge, Dave Grohl picking up where Nirvana left off and seeing what he can do with this baton. 


6.5/10


Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/4EnNuo8fG7dMoxMefbApRY

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf2fxGuqy00

Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foo_Fighters_(album)


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