As the iconic band’s eighth studio album release, it is safe to say that Sonic Highways is the worst thing to happen to Dave Grohl since the end of Nirvana. The album is significant only in its striking insignificance. Any Foo fans hoping for an exciting follow up to Wasting Light are sure to be disappointed by this eight-track joke of an album.
Nothing stands out in any of the songs, which is quite unusual for a Foo Fighters’ album; it’s a mystery how they even pulled it off. The musicality of the album is insufferably predictable. You don’t need to be a guitarist or a drummer to know what the next riff is, making the whole thing mind-numbingly boring. Sonic Highways progresses at an excruciating pace, leaving you beating your head against the wall, praying for the forty-two minutes of bullshit to end. This is quite disappointing, as the band’s previous music has always been pleasantly surprising and thoughtfully produced. Lyrically, the tracks are just as trivial. Every single song is repetitive, including singles like ‘Something From Nothing’ and ‘The Feast And The Famine’. Grohl’s typically riveting voice cannot even save this album; you find yourself begging for him to just shut up.
Perhaps if the Foo Fighters weren’t so wrapped up in making Sonic Highways into some thematic, polemic work of art, the actual quality of the music would have been a greater focus for the band. Unfortunately, they instead chose to go around to eight American cities and make songs about them with irrelevant political undertones. Maybe they are too consumed by their new fancy HBO TV show, Foo Fighters’ Sonic Highways, but it seems as if we’ve lost the band to the evil, corporate side of the music realm. Let’s all hope that Grohl can get his head out of his ass and get back to making music that doesn’t sound like some angsty teen’s garage band.