Fall Music Preview 2007: Bruce Springsteen, James Blunt, Alicia Keys and More

Foo Fighters
Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace
Out Now

Since their 2005 release, In Your Honor, Foo Fighters Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins became dads. "All of a sudden, I felt this sense of mortality," says Grohl. "Then I started thinking, 'Oh, fuck, I'm almost forty, I'd better start making some records.' " So the band nixed its previous plan -- to chill in 2007 -- and buckled down in its studio. It had a head start, though. Over the course of its acoustic tour, which featured eight musicians (twice the band's normal capacity), Grohl had laid down more than 130 riffs onto a ninety-minute cassette tape. "I was imagining all this additional instrumentation -- string, mandolins, B3's, Mellotrons, vibes -- working into the new Foo songs," he says. So on the new disc, instead of "preserving the conventional four-piece rock-band formula," the Foos let their sound open up -- at various points on their disc they embraced influences as different as Wings, Steely Dan and No Means No. Grohl says, "Having freed ourselves from all that bullshit, I think we made the best music of our lives." Click here for our review.

LISTEN
"The Pretender" from Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace

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