Everyone knows that Dave Grohl is the nicest guy in rock, and that might be because Dave Grohl knows everyone. He’s humble in front of the camera, good at telling funny stories, and a great dad—and to top it all off, he’s also pretty good at making music. He’s played with everyone from Nine Inch Nails to Paul McCartney. As Maxim Magazine once wrote, he’s “been in more bands than chlamydia.” Of course, he got his start in the nineties playing drums for a group called Nirvana. But Grohl has mainly spent the last 20 years playing with the Foo Fighters, with whom he won 11 Grammys.
And now, Grohl’s popularity and connections have paved the way for the Foo Fighters’ most recent multimedia project: Sonic Highways, which is both an album and a documentary TV series on HBO. Grohl and his four band members teamed up with producer Butch Vig, who also worked on their 2011 album Wasting Light, to record in eight different studios in eight different American cities. Spending about a week in each city, Grohl interviewed musicians associated with each place for the TV show in an effort to understand the city’s unique sound. He then took what he learned and incorporated it into a new song on the album. He has called the project “a love letter to American music.”
The HBO series is reminiscent of a similar documentary project that Grohl directed in 2013 called Sound City, which tells the story of a formerly famous L.A. recording studio. Each episode of Sonic Highways examines each location’s musical history through interviews and historical context. In order, Grohl visits Chicago, Washington, D.C., Nashville, Austin, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Seattle, and New York. The full album, featuring one track for each city, was released on Mon., Nov. 10.
It’s clear throughout the TV series that Grohl cares about these cities and their histories, but not enough to significantly change up the Foo Fighters’ sound on the album. As a band that’s grown to stadium show stardom, they rely on sharp guitar and a thundering rhythm section, and they pick things up in the chorus and slow them down in the verse. That’s not a bad formula, but if Grohl truly believes what he says during the show, that “the environment in which you make a record ultimately influences that record,” it doesn’t exactly come through that way.
It’s simply a translation issue between the two components of the project, because unlike the music, the TV show gives excellent snapshots of each city. In Washington, D.C., Grohl focuses on the go-go music scene, particularly the band Trouble Funk, and speaks to his punk rock idol Ian MacKaye, who started Discord Records as a teenager. In Nashville, Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris speak in thick accents about a rich songwriting culture. In Austin, Gary Clark, Jr. plays blues guitar and Jimmy Vaughan remembers Austin City Limits performances as well as his brother, Stevie Ray. It’s tasteful and informative—a perfect overview of what makes each city different musically.
But Grohl runs into trouble when he interjects and tries to speak for the cities, reaching for a neat summary to conclude each episode. He simplifies the tales of each punk rocker in D.C.—Grohl’s hometown—to Vig’s simplistic observation that “By nature of growing up in D.C., you’re forced to find your own path.” In Nashville, Grohl is drawn to the stories of Tony Joe White and Zac Brown (in whose studio the Foo Fighters now record their music, thanks to a previous Grohl collaboration). He qualifies them both as outsiders and runs with that theme, associating all of Nashville with it. And in Austin, he suddenly jumps from tales of blues clubs and psychedelic bands to pondering if the city’s growth might stifle creativity. I agree that it’s important to think about whether Austin can “stay weird,” but Grohl’s metaphor of a candle going out seems too melodramatic. When his project works best, the musicians can speak for themselves.
Still, there’s no denying Grohl’s enthusiasm throughout. He’s in awe of each studio that the Foo Fighters visit, humbled by every musician who has played there before. When he interviews them, he asks what inspired them, how they got their start, whether they realize that they are as important as he thinks they are. Sonic Highways makes a point of showing Grohl sitting down in hallways, hunched over with a notepad, scribbling lyrics and then showing them to his bandmates. And watching the show before listening to the album makes for a fun game of decoding references or quotes that you heard earlier, even if they’re sometimes a reach.
As Vig admits in the D.C. episode, “It’s a challenge to go into a new city each week and bang out a new song,” and it shows. After his geo-musical education, Grohl must actually do what he came to do, what he has done with the Foo Fighters for 20 years: make rock music. Though the track list is the shortest of any Foo Fighters album thus far, the songs themselves are especially long, with all but three tracks passing the five-minute mark. Perhaps Grohl tried to fit too much into the songs, or perhaps the project created more pressure than normal since the audience has the chance to see his creative process this time.
Sometimes it works when it’s just shy of experimental, getting close to something new or different for the Foo Fighters. The track “Congregation” has a familiar catchy Foo Fighters hook, but Zac Brown’s late bridge makes the song stand out. It’s not Nashville country, but its twangy guitar riff seems to capture Grohl’s time there—it’s most faithful to Sonic Highways’ mission statement. The final track, “I Am a River,” is another hit. It builds slowly, and instead of highlighting Grohl’s screams, it has a more instrumental focus—that is, in layering guitar parts, not in spotlighting solo performances. Grohl leads you right along in this conclusion, but at seven minutes it could stand to cut 30 seconds or so.
At other times it’s unclear where the Foo Fighters are trying to go, and Grohl seems to add some unnecessary turns. The D.C. song, “The Feast and the Famine,” stutters along with rhythmic pauses that sound more like hiccups than anything else. And right when it sounds like it’s over, Grohl begins to scream…for another full minute. “Something From Nothing” takes a few listens to get used to. It builds up several times but doesn’t get loud until Rick Nielson of Cheap Trick joins for a guitar solo, and then drags on too long after he cuts out. The one exception to these unexpected turns comes in “What Did I Do?/God as My Witness,” where Grohl begins the second of two separate movements with “I crossed the river finally,” a reference to the Colorado River that splits Austin.
On each track, the Foo Fighters feature a musical guest interviewed by Grohl on that city’s episode. They play with Gary Clark, Jr. (Austin), Ben Gibbard of Death Cab for Cutie (Seattle), Joe Walsh (LA), and even the Preservation Hall Jazz Band (New Orleans). While the Jazz Band’s horns add a nice tune to the chorus of “In the Clear,” they aren’t an obvious addition to the song. And this is true for most of the tracks— you wouldn’t realize there was a guest if Grohl didn’t tell you.
In a way, that tells the story of Sonic Highways as a whole. Dave Grohl sets out with a great idea and speaks to some great musicians along the way. Their stories are fascinating to hear on the TV series, but Grohl tries too hard to bring them all together, and he bottles them up in songs that run a little long. He’s reluctant to let others do all of the talking onscreen, reluctant to let them affect the tried and true Foo Fighters sound. The Foos still rock like they always have, but this album isn’t the Sonic Highway Grohl makes it out to be.