Immediately heart-opening mourning escort tracks for the new beginning.
For the second time in his incomparable career, the drum kit is a part of Dave Grohl’s grieving process. While he still had to compensate for the death of Kurt Cobain as a complete one-man band – and thus launched the Foo Fighters – the loss of drummer and confidante Taylor Hawkins († March 25, 2022) and Grohls Mother Virginia later that year, a double blow for the 54-year-old bandleader. I
In this context, the eleventh album by his second successful band is designed as a ten-song point plan of farewells that runs through all emotional stages. Between punk, (power) pop and alternative rock, melodic reaching into the cheap trick box and Beatles love tokens (“Beyond Me”), the vocal support of daughter Violet Maye (“Show Me How”) or the partially progressive , tonal Pink Floyd conventions, the ten-minute “The Teacher” changes tempi and moods.
Sometimes, like in the title track, the only thing that helps is screams of pain against the deep-seated lump in the throat. Even the Nirvana reprint of “Nothing At All” is not an isolated case: when the final “Rest” is sung, mostly to acoustic accompaniment, one inevitably has to think of Grohl’s previous band’s New York MTV unplugged session before starting with the The words ‘Waking up, had another dream of us/In the warm Virginia sun, there I will meet you’ conclude this intimate song cycle. BUT HERE WE ARE is a (survival) life-affirming Foo Fighters album and one of their best not only because of its rediscovered closeness to the immediacy of the debut.