The death of Taylor Hawkins was a shock. The ebullient drummer was snatched away in 2022 – too young, too talented – leaving fans, family and friends to deal with the aftermath. A year on, his band Foo Fighters have channelled all that grief into a record that serves as a conduit to catharsis. Melding heartache with defiance, But Here We Are addresses the loss of Hawkins, as well as the death of frontman Dave Grohl’s mother, Virginia. It’s their best album in years.
“We’re not here to save rock’n’roll,” Hawkins told The Independent in a 2019 interview, and that pretty much summed up the band’s approach. Their self-proclaimed dad rock has, in the second half of their career, been more about keeping fans happy than any grand attempt at reinvention. The riffs were heavy; Grohl rarely strayed from his gravelly bellow. As a band, they are stolid and safe, mixing alt-rock tropes with lyrics about overcoming life’s obstacles.
