music & movies

FOO FIGHTERS Medicine at Midnight

Grohl’s tightest set yet, with supernatural aid.

Dave Grohl has spent the past decade scouring the US for his own spirit. He made 2011’s ‘Wasting Light’ in his garage to try to recapture his teenage exuberance, 2014’s ‘Sonic Highways’ in a variety of America’s most storied studios to try to borrow their mythology, and 2017’s ‘Concrete And Gold’ in California’s spiritual Shangri-la Ojai, as if looking within himself for rock enlightenment. Along the way he’s worked with such luminaries as Justin Timberlake, Alison Mosshart and Ben Gibbard, with Eagles and Beatles and Cheap Tricks, in the hope of crossing the sonic streams. For tenth album ‘Medicine At Midnight’, recorded pre-lockdown, he’s even ventured beyond the physical realm, recording in a nearby haunted house with, he claims, poltergeists adjusting the pedal-board levels overnight.

Ironically, it’s injected new life into Foo Fighters. Where ‘Concrete And Gold’ was an unspoken homage alongside Dua Lipa and Jess Glynne for charity. ‘Medicine’, however, melts modern pop textures into Grohl’s trademark grunge-pop ballast with panache, and inspires some of his most infectious choruses since the 90s. gilds a canyon rock core with piston R&B beats, hand claps and soulful asides; resembles a catchy collaboration between AC/DC and TLC; and the verses of the funksome title track could have fallen off ‘Thriller’.