Foo Fighters - Concrete And Gold (2017)

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Foo Fighters - Concrete And Gold (2017)

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"I wanted it to be the biggest sounding Foo Fighters record ever. To make a gigantic rock record but with Greg Kurstin's sense of melody and arrangement… Motorhead's version of Sgt. Pepper… or something like that." So speaks Dave Grohl of the mission statement made manifest in Foo Fighters' ninth epic, the aptly-titled Concrete and Gold, due out September 15 worldwide on Roswell Records / RCA Records. Concrete and Gold was written and performed by Foo Fighters, produced by Greg Kurstin and Foo Fighters, and mixed by Darrell Thorp.

The band's earliest ideas for their ninth studio album included creating a studio on the Hollywood Bowl amphitheater in California and recording the album live in front a crowd of 20,000 people. However, band frontman Dave Grohl later lost interest in the idea upon learning that it had already recently been done by PJ Harvey with her 2015 recording sessions for her album The Hope Six Demolition Project. Plans further changed due to the events of the band touring in support of their prior studio album, Sonic Highways, when Grohl fell off the stage and broke his leg at a June 2015 concert in Sweden. Grohl still managed to complete the show, and through the use of his self-designed "throne", a large chair that could sit him comfortably, the band still managed to function, continuing their tour through the year and even managing to record and release the Saint Cecilia EP and song. After the tour, in early 2016, the band announced they would be entering an indefinite hiatus. While no reasons were given at the time, in 2017, Grohl admitted to Rolling Stone that privately, he was still struggling from the injury, still unable to walk and enduring daily, multi-hour physical therapy sessions. He secluded himself from the band, and set a goal for himself to stay away from music for an entire year while he focused on recuperating. However, at six months to the day, he cancelled the plan when he began writing the lyrics to the track "Run".

nitial writing sessions only involved Grohl, who continued being in seclusion from the band, although he initially struggled, feeling "out of practice" and "creatively atrophied" due to his longer than usual break from music. Grohl rented a Airbnb in Ojala, California, so he could focus on long bouts of writing, with Grohl recounting "I brought a case of wine and sat there in my underwear with a microphone for about five days, just writing." After twelve or thirteen rough ideas were mapped out, he ran them by the band, who shared Grohl's belief that he was on the right track with the material.[8] Happy with his work, but feeling the material still required further development, Grohl started thinking about reaching out to a music producer.

The band ended up working with music producer Greg Kurstin on the album.[9] Grohl had been listening to the work of Kurstin's indie pop band, The Bird and the Bee since 2014 and was very impressed with his work, calling it "so much more sophisticated than anything [he'd] ever heard." Grohl reached out to Kurstin, and learned that he had taken a hiatus from The Bird and the Bee to focus on his work as a music producer, producing songs including Halsey's "Strangers", Sia's "The Greatest" and "Cheap Thrills" and Adele's "Hello". The two both were interested in the challenge presented with working together – Kurstin had never worked on a heavy rock album, while Grohl had never worked with a pop songwriter – and decided to collaborate on the album.

"The last couple of albums had been made in ways that we were trying to get out of our comfort zone. I thought, 'What's the strangest thing for this band to do at this point?' And then I realized it was just to go into a studio and make a fucking album like a normal band." Frontman Dave Grohl, comparing the Concrete and Gold recording sessions to 2014's Sonic Highways, which was recorded in different studios around the U.S., and 2011's Wasting Light, which they did in Grohls garage to emulate the recording process of the 1990s and earlier.

Recording was done at the heavily populated EastWest Studios, where the band frequently ran into, and interacted with, various other musicians in the studio building. Recording sessions frequently culminated into large barbecues and alcohol drinking among the other artists using the studios, often leading to Grohl grilling meat for parties of up to forty people while finishing up recording sessions. The set up lead to the band having a number of high-profile collaborations on the album. The band worked with Boyz II Men member Shawn Stockman on the album's title track and album closer, which stemmed from a chance meeting between Grohl and Stockman in the parking lot. Grohl also announced that "probably the biggest pop star in the world" would provide backing vocals on a track as well, though he refused to name who, leading to much speculation due to the number of pop stars Kurstin had previously worked with prior to the Foo Fighters. Grohl later clarified that it was not Adele or Taylor Swift, and that the person has " been around a long time", and eventually revealed it to be Justin Timberlake. Further collaborations include vocals by Inara George on the track "Dirty Water", saxophone by David Koz on the track "La Dee Da", and vocals by Alison Mosshart of The Kills on "La Dee Da" and "The Sky Is a Neighborhood". Additionally, Paul McCartney contributed drums to the track "Sunday Rain" after entering the studio and recording two drum tracks without even hearing the song first, basing his performance entirely on Grohl recreating the song acoustically for him on the spot. Concrete and Gold also marks Rami Jaffee's first credit as an official band member, having been a session and touring keyboardist for the band since 2005.

The band describe the album's sound as where "hard rock extremes and pop sensibilities collide" and "Motorhead's version of Sgt. Pepper". Explaining further, the album's sound was described as combining heavy guitar riffs with "lush harmonic complexities". Grohl described the title track, which features the vocals of Shawn Stockman from Boyz II Men, as sounding like "[Black]Sabbath and Pink Floyd" and explaining that they "built a choir" out of Stockman's vocal takes, overdubbing them so it sounds "like 40 vocals stacked". Hawkins described the album as their "most psychedelic" and "weirdest" sounding.

Lyrically, the album is based around Grohl's thoughts about the future of the United States - "politically, personally, as a father, an American and a musician". "The Sky Is a Neighborhood" and "T-Shirt" represent a more bleak worldview by Grohl's, the two songs showing his concern for the future of humanity, and desire for escapism, respectively. The election and presidency of Donald Trump was cited as a huge influence of Grohl's negativity, with Grohl stating:

I look at all of the different periods of time where I’ve written lyrics, and they all have their own references and different phases. This one came out pretty clear: I'm a father now, I have to consider a lot more than I used to, and I think I've realised we’re not all as free as we were before. In every way. I mean, as the political arena started heating up in America before the elections, it became clear that there was so much more threatening all of our lives than I'd considered before. I'm looking at a candidate that has blatant disregard for the future environmentally, when it comes to women’s rights, diplomatically…I have three daughters that are going to survive me for decades – how are they going to get on unless there’s some positive and progressive change?"

While the lyrics were written to vent Grohl's political frustrations, the album lyrics themselves are not overtly-political.

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Foo Fighters - Concrete And Gold (2017)

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