Album Review: Foo Fighters – Your Favorite Toy
3 min read
I love the Foo Fighters… I’ve loved them since I first heard Monkey Wrench a long time ago, and I’d comfortably put them in my top five live gigs I’ve seen (Glasto 2017, IIRC), so you can imagine my glee at covering their new album, Your Favorite Toy — despite the obvious American flaw in the spelling. At this point, they don’t really need introducing — decades in, and still one of the biggest rock bands on the planet, balancing stadium-sized anthems with a catalogue that’s become part of the furniture for a lot of us. Your Favorite Toy, released via RCA Records, is their twelfth studio album, and comes off the back of a period that’s seen the band navigate loss, change, and the kind of reflection that inevitably seeps into the music. Time to find out whether this is another addition to an already stacked legacy, or a step that genuinely pushes them in a new direction.
Kicking off with Caught in the Echo and this is some great, aggressive Foo Fighters, akin to some of their early 2000’s stuff… and honestly it’s relieving it’s more One by One and less Sonic Highways. Of All People next, and if not the best of the album, it’s definitely in the top two – great lyrics (about a guy on the scene who got everyone else hooked) and good aggressive drumming and lead guitar. Window is where the album tails off a little, with a hollowed out post-Cobain, post-grunge feel to it, while title track Your Favorite Toy and following track If You Only Knew are loud and distorted, with a 1990s rock/indie feel to it… but no real bite.
Spit Shine is by far the fastest and loudest track on the album – the instrumentation is excellent… but the vocals feel a little awkward and the vocals are oversaturated (which seems to be a common trait on the album). Unconditional sees us returning to the grunge-like track earlier (which for me doesn’t work for Grohl, but in general isn’t a style I enjoy), whereas Child Actor is fine up to the end of the first chorus, but “turn the cameras off” repeated got old quick, and penultimate track Amen, Caveman has a great opening riff (Rope anyone??) but otherwise feels like it could be a demo track from a 1990’s mid-tier band. We close proceedings with Asking for a Friend, the other strong track on the album, with a feeling of a redemption about the lyrics, this is a hard rocking track that’s worth a listen to.
Being honest about Your Favorite Toy is difficult, because I love the Foo Fighters… but… if I was going to see them live, how many of this album would I want to hear? Sadly, the answer is (at best) one of either Of All People or Asking for a Friend early on in the set. Sadly for me the rest of the album is a whiff – it feels like someone putting everything they can into something they don’t really care about… and that makes me sad, because I want this to be early 2000’s Foo Fighters, and I don’t think they’ll get back to there again (sadly). Still would go and see them live, so long as they’re nto plugging anything post 2010-ish.
