Wasting Light

Recorded in the garage of frontman Dave Grohl's home in Encino, Calif., the 11-song set is an explosive, high-octane burst of rock energy from a 16-year-old band that is tightly honed and righteously raw.

What really matters is that nearly ten years after Songs for the Deaf, Josh Homme's influence finally rears its head on a Foo Fighters record, Dave Grohl leading his band of merry marauders -- including Pat Smear, who returns to the fold for the first time since 1997's The Colour and the Shape -- through the fiercest album they've ever made.

Wasting Light is much more than a salad-days nostalgia trip -- it's Grohl's most memorable set of songs since 1997's The Colour and the Shape.

It sounds like fun was had in Dave Grohl's garage, but this good album could've been great had they spent more time songwriting prior to plugging in and cranking up.

Wasting Light is as good as mainstream arena rock gets now, twenty years after the fact.

It is exactly as you would have expected it to sound, and ultimately that isn't enough for anyone who doesn't rush out on the day of release to buy their albums.

While Wasting Light features a host of worthy set-openers, few prove to be as sticky or memorable as any number of their previous singles.

Given their status, it wouldn't have been a surprise if Wasting Light had been a by-numbers affair for Foo Fighters.

Recent devotees may be left wondering why there's nothing for them to sing-along to.

Wasting Light appears to be just another good, if forgettable, entry in the Foo Fighters catalogue.

Foo Fighters have simply released one of the best albums of the year, and of their career.

In all, Wasting Light is almost a summation of where the band has been, as well as a convincing statement of why, nearly 20 years since they came together, Grohl & Co. are yet a force to be reckoned with, still influential and still relevant.

If nothing else, Wasting Light is Foo Fighters' first generally good record in six years, solid from top to bottom without the filler that marred the band's early records.

Bringing in Nevermind producer Butch Vig risked dangerous nostalgia, but his analog recording gives a fresh, warm feel to the proceedings.

Not everything is so different though, and in a good way. The Foo Fighters still adhere to the formula that sells out arenas from London to Japan.

Wasting Light isn't a masterpiece, nor does it see Grohl really reinventing the wheel as far as the band's sound goes, but it's clearly painted from a broader pallette of colours and it's clearly their first consistently good set of songs.

It's the type of song the Foo Fighters wrote knowing their nineties fans would relish. Still, this is as far removed from the Alternative Nation as you can get.

Wasting Light sounds like the work of a band with something to prove, rather than the work of one of the biggest rock bands in the world.

The three-year gap between albums will ensure this tops next week's album chart, but it's a drab, unrewarding experience.

For all its faux-primitive origins, their seventh studio album is every bit as likely to ship platinum as the previous six.

It's all competently done, but none of it matches the invention of Grohl's drumming in the last decade with Queens of the Stone Age, Probot or Them Crooked Vultures.

Add in a clutch of terrific songs that perfectly balance leader Grohl's gift for pairing earworm melodies with both chunky power-pop guitars and thrashy screamers and you've got the most vital, stem-to-stern enjoyable Foo Fighters album in quite some time.

Even after several listens there's little here to really strike a chord with the long-standing Foos fan. That's not to say it's poor - it's far from that.

Sounds like his band are having too much fun.

The album reunites Grohl with producer Butch Vig, who worked on Nirvana's 1991 monster, Nevermind, and brings the same nuanced approach to weight and release here.

That said, the occasional ghastly clunker such as Miss the Misery apart, the songs do their job ruthlessly and brutally. But there's a welcome lighter touch on I Should Have Known, Grohl's touching address to Cobain (featuring Nirvana's Krist Novoselic on bass and accordion), and Walk, perhaps the most satisfying Foo rocker since Learn to Fly.

Using entirely analogue tape, Vig, together with top mixer Alan Moulder, brings a deliciously lump-free production consistency to the Foos, who have often erred between the indigestible extremes of thrash-metal and acoustic angst.

Really, though, this is nothing more than business as usual: some killer, some filler.

The Foo Fighters may have ballooned in size over the past few years and if it took them going back to their roots to make an album this good then so be it, but when all is said and done Wasting Light is as an example of how to be a globe-eatingly massive band and still sound young, hungry and, above all, important.

To date, the Foo Fighters have never tried to reinvent the wheel, per se; they just want to keep it rolling. And that's just what Wasting Light does. For that purpose, Foo Fighters give us a solid record from open to close. The drought is over. Rock is back.

Light is a muscular rock & roll throwdown, featuring the Foos delivering exactly the kind of catchy, pummeling anthems they're known for, with total disregard for the whims of the masses.

Wasted Light finds Foo Fighters at their boldest, their most vivid. [May 2011, p.101]

The defining album of his career, Wasting Light is the sound of Dave Grohl putting his whole life in context. [May 2011, p.110]

This is a largely unimpressive album. [9 Apr 2011, p.50]

Finally, the coolest guy in rock makes a record worthy of his reputation. [May 2011, p.92]