Hearts of gold
Dave Grohl invites some of his showbiz friends to help out on the new Foo Fighters album, while a legendary Neil Young bootleg gets a long-awatied official release
Dave Grohl, by common consent the Nicest Man in Rock, can now bid for the Hardest Working Man in Showbiz tag. Not even a nasty leg break can keep the
Foo Fighters frontman down. Having completed the band’s Sonic Highways world tour seated on a Spinal Tapesque throne, Grohl took some time off to recuperate – and managed to sit down for a mere six months of recovery before scratching that itch again.
Concrete And Gold is the satisfying result, forged in cahoots with Adele producer Greg Kurstin, with guest backing vocals from Justin Timberlake and Boyz II Men’s Shawn Stockman, plus Grohl’s old mucker Paul Mccartney on drums, all bringing robust pop credentials to the table.
This is no mainstream bland-out, however. The big though brief airpunching 70s power rock opener
T-shirt, demented Gothic thrash of recent single Run, lean but mean blues rocking Make It Right and economic garage rock of La Dee Da testify to the taut dynamism of an album which confidently blends the band’s rock and pop chops.
The Sky Is A Neighbourhood is another brawny arena rocker with the additional dramatic swirl of strings, its odd title concept referring to stewardship of the planet and beyond. Grohl is more of a big picture politico – “trouble to the right and left, whose side you’re on?” he asks.
The foot comes off the accelerator for the first time on Dirty Water but its mellow, summery sound eventually revs up to a rocking climax to reflect its far from placid envirogeddon concerns. “Where’s your Shangri-la now?” Grohl muses on the blatantly Beatley pop number
Happy Ever After (Zero Hour),
garlanded with wistful backing vocal harmonies. For all its ferocious moments,
Concrete and Gold is a sophisticated pop production and never more so than on the epic closing title track, a Sabbath sludge rock lament featuring a choir of Timberlakes and Stockmans.
Glasgow’s Gun also stick to their classic rock lane on latest album
Favourite Pleasures, though it is a more conventional and less stimulating affair than the Foos’ offering, characterised by the efficient mainstream rocking of Take Me Down and drab rock ballad The
Boy Who Fooled The World but better
served by glam stomper Here’s Where
IAM and the blend of grit and fistpumping chorus on Black Heart. In contrast, Deacon Blue frontman
Ricky Ross dials back the strutting showmanship on his latest solo outing which was initially inspired by a piano pow-wow with pals
and features songs old, new, borrowed and blue in a stripped
down setting. Short Stories Vol. 1 is being sold in tandem with tickets for his forthcoming solo tour and is effectively a preview of his setlist.
Deacon Blue favourites Raintown
and Wages Day feature in less rumbustious form and the best of the bunch of new self-styled “homeless songs” are the ruminative croon of The Kid at the Airport, the blithe
baroque pop of Siggi the Bully and the touch of Tom Waits storytelling on
Only God and Dogs.
The best album of the week, however, is the fabled 41-year-old
Hitchhiker, recorded by Neil Young in one spontaneous Malibu session in August 1976, bootlegged many times over the years but now given a belated official release. Some of its ten acoustic songs were re-recorded in the interim – Pocahontas and
Powderfinger on Rust Never Sleeps, for example – and became Young staples, but a couple of tracks, Hawaii and Give Me Strength, were never placed elsewhere and are deservedly retrieved on this prime slice of vintage Americana, all the more remarkable for its spontaneity.
The best album of the week is the fabled 41-year-old Hitchhiker, recorded by Neil Young in one Malibu session in 1976