A quarter-century after they rose from the ashes of grunge, climbed Billboard pop charts, vacuumed up Grammys, and conquered stadiums worldwide, the Foo Fighters return with another album of inconsequential music. When you’re a band of this size and tenure, new albums aren’t necessarily born of personal inspiration but out of a fraternal pledge to those around you: your band, your fanbase, your road crew, a new line of Ram trucks. The guys of the Foo Fighters—who have this wonderful shabby chic Venice Beach dad look now—continue to plow through albums with one thankless goal in mind: to keep the dying institution of rock alive. And with his cheerful indefatigability and his commitment to the primacy of guitars, Dave Grohl is the generational rock spokesperson the future deserves, Bruce Springsteen without the tunes.
Influence, legacy, and musical quality aside, Bruce and Dave might be the last two musicians still living inside of the remaining slipstream of monocultural rock’n’roll. They are both performers and entertainers above all, both icons of endurance; both give an outsized amount of themselves to their fans, on stage and off. Bruce performs four-hour shows and pulls a beaming crowd member up on stage every time; Grohl tours with a broken leg on a throne made of guitars and drum battles a 10-year-old. They both possess the innate ability to charm anyone who heaves into their view. And—as if by providence—both Bruce and the Foo Fighters played the inauguration afterparty of President Joe Biden, whose broad call for healing and unity was epitomized by two artists who call for healing and unity in the broadest possible terms.
Grohl’s lawful-good lifestyle presents an eternal conflict between being unable to hate the guy and being unable to enjoy the music he continues to make. Foo Fighters seem to approach their formative rock, hardcore, and punk influences with the prompt, “What would be fun to play on Guitar Hero?” If the Guitar Hero reference feels dated, wait until you hear their new music. Their 10th album, Medicine at Midnight, adds very little to their extensive catalog of interchangeable power pop and hard-rock sing-alongs. But you can’t hang them on their own music, because Foo Fighters would never dare to give you enough rope to do it.
A Foo Fighters record rolls out in the same way Taco Bell rolls out a new menu item: A nominal twist on the same five or so ingredients. Produced once again by pop impresario Greg Kurstin, Medicine at Midnight is supposed to be the band’s party record, their dance record, their Bowie’s Let’s Dance record, even. Charitably, they could be talking about “Shame Shame,” a creeping acoustic number that signals a slinky new direction until Grohl rampages all over the chorus. Maybe they are referring to the title track, a geriatric, leathery blues anthem for men who love the feeling of a new John Varvatos jacket. Because every generation gets the “Miss You” it deserves, the song has a starchy groove and background chorus of women singing about “rain on the dancefloor.” You can try to fit Dave Grohl into a sparkly white suit, but underneath he’s always just wearing jeans and a T-shirt.