'But Here We Are' by Foo Fighters
Grief might foment art, but the tear-cleansed clarity after grief—or after its first crushing wave recedes—allows an artist to shape and make sense of it. That’s why Foo Fighters’ 11th studio album, But Here We Are, is a collection of well-crafted songs with allusions to the March 2022 death of longtime drummer Taylor Hawkins…rather than a throat-scraping scream extended by howling feedback.
Bandleader Dave Grohl occupies the drummer’s stool in a way he hasn’t done for the Foos since 2005’s In Your Honor, and he hasn’t lost the skills he showed when Nirvana made him famous.
Nirvana also, of course, inadvertently provided him with his first and almost certainly most devastating encounter with the death of a bandmate, and he now responds with less immediate shock and a deeper, more measured feeling of loss.
“Over it/Think I’m getting over it/There’s no getting over it,” Grohl sings on “Over You,” and, combined with the prettily overdriven riffs and smooth midtempo glide, he can hardly put it any more plainly than that.
Just as plainly, co-producer Greg Kurstin and the other Foo Fighters—including veterans like former Germs guitarist Pat Smear and former Sunny Day Real Estate bassist Nate Mendel—don’t embroider fussiness onto “Nothing at All,” which mingles Pixies punk with Posies pop, nor use anything more urgent than the highway-speed momentum of “The Teacher” to ride it to the ten-minute mark.
“The Teacher” and the initially acoustic, suddenly electric finale of “Rest” form the goodbye Foo Fighters give to Hawkins and to Grohl’s mother, Virginia, who died last July. However, “Show Me How” is a mournfully mellow duet between Grohl and his daughter Violet that glows with shared love. It’s a reminder that the most useful tribute to the beloved dead is how well we treat the beloved living.
Stream or download But Here We Are on Amazon.
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