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 Fresh
Spin
Artist: Foo
Fighters
Album:
Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace
Released: Sept.
25, 2007
Label: RCA
Verdict: A band
in flux
Foo Fighters?
Foo Fighters? What’s next, High School Musical Two? But famous
or not, Dave Grohl and his mates represent everything right with
mainstream 21st-century rock ’n’ roll; they’re all you can ask
of a rock band and more. Yet, the real reason to pay attention
to them at this juncture is that Foo Fighters also happens to be
a band in transition — a talented act torn between ingrained
hard-rock roots and gradually maturing beauty, between a slug of
beer in a fraternity basement and a long, slow sip of high-grade
single-malt scotch. Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace
lies at the nexus of this transformation, and that alone should
provide enough justification to keep one’s eye on Mr. Grohl for
the foreseeable future.
The somehow
underrated 1999 album There Is Nothing Left to Lose
was nothing short of a moon shot, a hard-rock masterpiece whose
poised influence can still be heard amongst 2007’s sorry miasma
of grunge has-beens. Yet in the decade since, Foo Fighters has
discovered a softer side — witness Disc 2 of 2005's In Your
Honor, as moving and consistent an acoustic set as you’ll
ever hear. That this shift in direction should be manifestly
evident on Echoes comes as no surprise, though it makes
for a somewhat frustrating listening experience — the old-school
hard-rock offerings (“Let It Die,” “Erase/Replace”) come off as
forced, while the soft-to-middling numbers uniformly soothe and
stimulate, as though in their old age the band has come to feel
more at home in heaven than in hell. Echoes stands on its
own and is well worth a download. But as a harbinger of things
in store, it tastes even better — a signpost on the road to some
truly fascinating sonic developments.
 Old
Gem
Artist: darXtar
Album: Tombola
Released:
November 2001
Label: Record
Heaven
Verdict: Best
of the space-rock flock
It’s sad to
say, but the world of contemporary progressive rock remains an
utter wasteland, as it has for 20 years. What began with
accomplished ’60s classics (The Moody Blues, Yes), subsequently
weaving through a tighter, more polished phase in the ’80s (Marillion),
has now begat the bastard stepchild known as Prog-Metal — they
of the endless solos and bombastic, self-indulgent affectations
(namely Spock’s Beard, Dream Theater and their ilk). But if
there’s one modern prog act worth ferreting out — aside from the
great Deadwood Forest, of course — the vote would easily go to
Swedish space-rock virtuosos darXtar.
When everyone
and everything in a particular musical category sounds exactly
the same, it can be tough to differentiate yourself from the
pack, and even tougher to put one’s finger on exactly which
subtle divergences finally turned the trick. Well, whatever that
“divergence” might be, Tombola has it — a thoughtful,
reflective, kaleidoscopic approach to progressive music, one
closer to Melville than Dan Brown (in ambition, if not
accomplishment). The majority of Tombola’s tunes are
excellent and relatively compact for this genre, averaging
around five minutes or so. But a few — “Blue Frozen Flame” and
“High On Hopes” in particular — border on the downright
supernatural; “High On Hopes” may be the most righteous
space-rock song ever recorded, replete with a winding, pre-1975
Fleetwood Mac “hypnotized” guitar solo to help escort you down
the rabbit hole. Is Tombola pretentious? Of course it
is; pomposity comes with the territory here, as do murky,
inscrutable lyrics (“If the grass shows its lightning/And the
trees whisper too”). But darXtar brandishes a focused talent
most other by-the-numbers prog-rock bands sorely lack, as this
record surely attests. |
