Although released just a year after the suicide of his Nirvana bandmate Kurt Cobain, the Foo Fighters’ 1995 debut was a breezy delight that seemed tonally in stark contrast to the trauma Dave Grohl had so recently experienced. The mood surrounding But Here We Are, arriving a year after the death of drummer Taylor Hawkins, couldn’t be more different. Throughout, the lyrics bear the scars of grief: “Think I’m getting over it/ But there’s no getting over it”; “I’ve been hearing voices/ None of them are you”; “You showed me how to grieve/ But never showed me how to say goodbye.”
It’s a shame, then, that the songs accompanying Grohl’s most powerfully affecting set of lyrics so often fail to reach the same standard. Rescued, Under You and the title track are the sort of route-one, bellowed stadium-pleasers that the Foos have been knocking out with diminishing returns for the past 20 years. The 10-minute The Teacher pitches for “epic” but plods rather, although its impassioned, static-drenched ending just about makes up for that. The best moment, Rest, is the simplest: a touching goodbye that builds from quiet acoustic strumming to genuinely moving full-band climax.
