One would have hoped Dave Grohl would have learned not to separate his two musical leanings by now.
Three minutes and 22 seconds into the first disc of his band's new double album, the Foo Fighters' frontman lets loose his first throat-rending howl. On the second disc, it takes only 34 seconds for Grohl to begin the first of the almost-whispered lullabies that make up the second half of In Your Honor, an album split distinctly into loud and not-so-loud halves.
Even a cursory examination of the most successful Foo Fighters songs - and there have been many since the band's birth almost exactly 10 years ago, including "My Hero," "Everlong" and "Learn To Fly" - shows the band blows away all its post-grunge competitors when it veers from Grohl's painful melodies to the thrashing guitars and pounding drums. By splitting the latter acoustic tracks and their softer delivery completely from the hard-edged grind and shouts of the first disc, the album precludes itself from reaching the band's previous heights.
Which isn't to say that Grohl and his fellow Fighters aren't better at either rocking hard or strumming softly than nearly all their contemporaries. The album's first single, the relentless "Best of You," ties with the White Stripes' "Blue Orchid" as the catchiest song on modern rock radio so far this summer. Grohl enlists talents as varied as Norah Jones, Queens of the Stone Age singer-guitarist Josh Homme and Led Zepplin's John Paul Jones to give the acoustic half of In Your Honor a nuanced beauty.
The second disc is also a step forward for Grohl's lyrical ability, which blends quite nicely with the assured strumming that marks standout tracks like "Still" and "Razor."
Grohl claims to have been disappointed with the rushed production on the band's previous effort, 2002's One by One, and therefore spent more than a year fine-tuning the 20 songs on In Your Honor. Perhaps he should trust the instincts he's shown in the past and not force solid songs into solely acoustic softness or electric rage.
