Foo Fighters' One By One has dark yet well-rounded sound

by Kenn Rodriguez

Daily Lobo

It would've been understandable if Dave Grohl had closed shop on the Foo Fighters after the band's last record, There Is Nothing Left to Lose.

What else was there to accomplish? He'd already beaten long odds by hitting big with his first record, Foo Fighters. The Foo's second CD, The Colour and the Shape, took more a more nuanced approach but lost little of Grohl's power-punk attitude and was even more successful.

Nothing Left to Lose, which was about as successful, lost much of the punk and showed off Grohl's pop songwriting chops. It seemed to be the end of the road. Where else could Grohl go?

One By One, the new disc from the Fighters of Foo shows that there's plenty more sonic space for Grohl to explore. And it also shows that the Foos are truly a band at this point - the other band members have long surpassed the role of being just Grohl's sidemen.

The most striking thing about One By One (RCA/ Roswell Records) is its edgy sound. Gone is all the bright surface sound of Nothing. In its place is a darker, denser sound that gives songs like the opener "All My Life," "Come Back" and "Low" an urgency. This is particularly true for "Low," a song that propels itself with an insistent guitar/drum combo and an unconscious imperative.

Lyrically, these songs are also a lot darker than anything else the band had put out since Foo Fighters. But even on his first disc, Grohl would leaven his lyrics with a smart-alecky attitude. Here the 'tude is replaced with an insistence Grohl exhibited in hits like "Everlong" and "Walking After You."

But Grohl doesn't ditch his pop sensibilities to make One By One angsty. Instead he uses it as a spice to give the record a more well-rounded sound. After all, Grohl knows his strength is in the way he fuses punk power with A.M. '70s pop.

And he doesn't have to be kitschy about it to excel at it like the Apples in Stereo.

The guts of the CD have a kind of new-wave/modern-rock motif that moves the Foo's into a sort of '80s feel - one that's more Police than Billy Idol though, thanks.

Grohl still manages to rock out on "Burn Away." Even at their mellowest - on songs like "Disenchanted Lullaby" and "Tired of You" - the Foos still manage to keep things moving along. The epic feel of songs like "February Stars" is missing from this batch of ballads.

Overall, One By One is as good as it gets in today's modern-rock melange.