Medicine At Midnight - Foo Fighters: Review
Foo Fighters
are the long running alterative rock project famously formed by Dave Grohl a few years after Nirvana ended. The band have been consistently commercially successful with numerous recognizable hits across their career, but critical acclaim has largely avoided them in the third act of their career.
Review By Lav:
While there are plenty of Foo Fighters tracks I enjoy, I wouldn't really consider myself a fan. Their cheeky brand of dad rock is certainly capable of spawning some decent radio hits but it often feels tepid in full length form. It's been a very long time since the band released an album I liked from start to finish and even when they try and up the ante on their energy like their previous album, it usually doesn't hit the mark. So my expectations for the record weren't particularly high and if not for one single I surprisingly enjoyed I might have skipped reviewing the record entirely. Unfortunately Medicine is pretty much exactly what I expected it to be.
The whole reason this record was even on my radar was because of its lead single Shame Shame. The track features one of the slowest progressions I've ever heard in a Foo Fighters song and it adds up to a great bridge and soaring hook. The song isn't afraid to deal in icy tones and avoids the garish instrumental maximalism of some of their tracks and the results are really solid. Making A Fire is the records opening track and its upbeat with some energetic riffing and gruff lead vocals backed by a pleasant chorus. The song is a little bit catchy and a little bit raw and I enjoy the final product. Holding Poison is the only other track on the record I was entirely positive about as it kicks off in such an explosive way but manages to maintain that high and even grow more anthemic throughout. The guitars are totally groovy and it avoids some of the generic songwriting concepts that plague other songs here.
The title track Medicine At Midnight kind of reminds me of when Paramore randomly started making surf rock. It's different from what I expected from Foo Fighters but I wouldn't call it entirely well done. The song has a stronger grove and beat than I'd expect and Dave's vocals are ghostly and often slightly abstracted. It doesn't blow me away but it's a welcome change of pace. No Son Of Mine sounds like a recently unearthed piece of 80's hair rock that would have been instantly forgotten on the radio. While the guitar soloing is no doubt fun, the driving instrumentation doesn't do much to drag the track into 2020. Love Dies Young is the closing track with some tolerable performances but they fight an uphill battles. The whole song is written so sweet that its absolutely painful and sometimes hard to listen to with the soaring guitar leads and stomach churning youthfulness. It's fine in the background but I struggle with paying much direct attention to it.
Cloudspotter wins the hotly contested award for the records corniest moment. The hook makes me want to pull my hair out and roll my eyes into the back of my head, meanwhile the track is barely rocking despite how loud its turned up. The result is obnoxiously low impact and instantly forgettable. Waiting On A War is yet another in a line of slow blown out motivational anthems from the band and they continue to get more sappy and meaningless. Not all of that decline is lyrical either as the cloudy instrumentals do just as much to dilute the actual point of the song, not a fan. Finally there's Chasing Birds which I'm really not sure what to make of at all. While they aren't using the most cliched lyrics I've ever heard sometimes it feels like it over the hushed, cloudy atmosphere. I'm not really impacted by any of the lyrics which means there's nothing worth hanging onto since everything else is so breezy and generic.
Medicine At Midnight is pretty much what I expected it to be. Foo Fighters are politely and generically rocking their way through a series of forgettable tracks. Every once in a while they cobble together something particularly catchy or an idea that's somewhat outside the box, but ultimately in a year that has already had some pretty great and groundbreaking rock music this just doesn't do much for me. 4/10
Album Cover Review By Tyler Judson:
