Echoes Silence Patience And Grace - Foo Fighters > Reviews > Foo Fighters - Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace

Author's product rating:   

Originality	Definitely a cut above the rest
Lyrics	Sublime
Quality and consistency of tracks	A couple of weak links
How does it compare to the artist's other releases	Good
Value for Money	Good

Advantages:	A new Foo Fighter album
Disadvantages:	Too laid - back for the traditional fan

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

Here comes the sixth studio album by who many consider as one of, it not the, biggest rock band on the planet at the moment - The Foo Fighters. But how does "Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace" fair with it's predecessors?

Released in September 2007 after a couple years away just playing every venue in the world it seemed, the album was greeted with great anticaption. Opening track "The Pretender" was the first single taken from the album, and despite it getting almost religiously overplayed on stations such as Radio 1 it's still worth a listen as it is a genuinely top track. The second single from the album, "Long Road to Ruin", takes a good few listens before it gets to the mark of The Pretender, possibly because it doesn't have the 'up-and-at-them' attitude that a number of previous Foo Fighters singles have had (Monkey Wrench, Breakout, All My Life). But don't think for a minute that it's a 'lesser' song - it's not.

The band showed with their previous album, 'In Your Honor', that they are seriously maturing with a whole disc dedicated to acoustic tracks. Evidently they thought that was such a good idea that they'd carry on in a similar trend here. For a fan such as myself who's followed them since the start, it's a bit of a shame......

Tracks such as 'Statues', 'Home' and 'Stranger Things Have Happened" certainly aren't bad tracks. Anything but. But due to their, for use of a better term, laid-back nature on previous albums they'd have just been one off tracks on the album (Walking After You, Aurora) but here they make up nearly a majority of tracks on the album.

Elsewhere, 'But, Honestly' and 'Come Alive' are the regular rock-song set-up...slowly building into a cressendo of snare drums, distorted guitars and a trademark Dave Grohl-growl. 'Cheer Up Boys (Your Make-Up Is Running)' does seem to take us back to a style from their debut album - very fast, short lengthed songs. And tracks such as 'Let It Die' and 'Erase/Replace' could certainly be considered as the next singles...unless they're sticking with the solely acoustic option.

Odd then that what I've probably dubbed the best four tracks on the album are the first four tracks. Start with your best material and all that, but does that suggest that the rest of the album is merely 'filler' music? Not necessarily, many will think their favourite song is later on in the album. I'm just a traditional Foo Fighter fan and not entirely all into this 'acoustic' malarky!

When compared with their prevous efforts, the vast majority of fans will still and will always say 'The Colour & The Shape' is the best album. Some will say the self-titled debut album and some 'There's Nothing Left To Lose'. Yet, concerningly, very few will say 'One By One' and 'In Your Honor'. Although this review isn't exactly about explaining why this is the case, I could give a suggestion as to why - Grohl's best talent is writing explosive rock songs, not quiet-acoustic little numbers for unplugged sessions. In this album and the previous two he seems to have slowly steered the band in this direction. Maybe the grey hairs are starting to show? Maybe he felt like a slight change? But I'll just say if it's not broke, why fix it?

Personally, after a couple of listens, the album does suggest promising things - the first 4 songs are very good. 'Come Alive' could make it 5 if everything happened just a little bit quicker; it just takes too long to really get going.

However, despite me seemingly having a go at it, the truth is 'ESP&G' is better than the bands previous two albums. From my own point of view it's not as good as their first three efforts, but some will disagree. The amazing fact is though, many bands could only dream of producing this material to be their best ever album. In my eyes this is merely the Foo Fighters fourth best......The biggest rock band on the planet? You better believe it.