Foo Fighters Foray into Pop with Medicine at Midnight
I liked Medicine at Midnight. There, I said it.
Despite the obvious kickback that was going to come from die-hard traditionalists in the rock community, the Foo Fighters’ new foray into their version of pop music was, in this reviewer’s humble opinion, a success. Mostly.
Image Courtesy of Rolling Stone
There is definitely a lot of familiarity in the chord progressions, and rhythms favored in the past make a comeback; combining that immediate recognition with new features like drum loops and orchestral instrumentation is interesting in a good way. It does beg the question, however: with access to Taylor Hawkins, why the hell would you use a drum loop?
Medicine At Midnight is a double-edged sword for the band. If Foo Fighters were even ten years behind where they are in their career, they wouldn’t be able to get away with throwing synthesizers and cowbells into their rock and roll image without being branded as sellouts or losing fans to their changing sound. On the flip side, because of who and what they are, and with the career that they’ve had before this, after the first three fun-filled, new but familiar, check-out-how-wildly-talented-Violet-Grohl-is tracks, I found myself longing for the days of Wasting Light and Sonic Highways. It’s a no-win scenario.
(To clarify: Violet Grohl is wildly talented, and I want to hear more from her as soon as possible.)
For all of its paradoxes, Medicine at Midnight is a genuinely good album; it’s well-produced and full of setlist-padding material. “Making A Fire” and “Love Dies Young” bookend the tracklist very nicely, making it feel almost like a whole musical life begins and ends within 36 minutes (the shortest Foo Fighters album so far). I would also be willing to lay down a nice sum of money betting that “Holding Poison” will start a mosh pit the second that mosh pits can be started again (I have a sneaking suspicion that was its purpose).
Late last year, I watched Foo Fighters give a concert live-streamed from the Roxy on the Sunset Strip. While it’s always a pleasure to watch them perform, this particular performance was riddled with a kind of sadness that doesn’t usually have a place at live shows. After each house-shaking number, there would be sparse applause amid a deafening silence: not a result of the quality of the performance, but rather the conditions of the circumstance—no audience but the crew, no ambient sound but the whirring of the video cameras. No bar, no merch table, no life amidst this particular party. After a while, Grohl couldn’t hide that he’d noticed it, too.
Image Courtesy of Daily News
“I said, ‘no, man, we’re not doing it until we can go out and do it like that,’” he said in between songs. “Everyone started doing these livestreams…Fuck. This. Shit.” But then he remembered—and we did too, as lonely listeners in our living rooms—“But we needed joy, you need happiness, so if we can’t be in each other’s faces right now, this is what we need to do to bring a little joy and happiness.”
I’m not ashamed to admit that I cried as he went on. A live music fan for most of my life, sitting on my couch, closer to Foo Fighters than I could have ever afforded to be live (a real bonus of livestreams: everyone gets the best seat in the house), waiting for the day we could all be back together again.
I forgave that concert for making me cry, and I had a great time. In that same way, I can forgive Medicine at Midnight for its faults, for falling into the crack between too familiar and not familiar enough. Foo Fighters trying new things is ultimately still Foo Fighters, and for any other band, that’s a hard feat to pull off. Not this band, though.
They played to an empty room. But they knew we were there, and they knew we would stay.