Foo Fighters New Album, Medicine At Midnight, Rocks Hard and Steady
4.5 out of 5 Stars
Foo Fighters are no strangers to putting out awesome rock albums, and Medicine at Midnight delivers another notch on this bedpost for Dave Grohl and gang.
I’m not going to sugar coat it, when I first heard the songs “Shame, Shame” and “Making a Fire” I was a bit thrown off, and I wasn’t sure that I was going to like this album.
It’s not because the songs are all that bad or anything, but because they are the first two songs on the album and both have a pretty different vibe than typical Foo songs, it definitely came off as if the band had decided to go in a much different direction for this album than previous albums.
Fortunately, as some of the other songs came on (notably “Waiting on a War”, the title track “Medicine At Midnight” and “Holding Poison”) I realized that these were just a couple of songs to mix things up rather than to drastically go off the rails, and I was relieved.
This led me to give the album a re-listen with a new perspective, and I find all the songs to be quite good.
I definitely enjoyed the song “No Son of Mine” as well. It definitely has the implication that the society we live in now is full of people who willfully conduct evil acts and either shift the blame from themselves, don’t take responsibility or beg for forgiveness AFTER they have committed the wrongful acts...sounds pretty familiar in this day and age.
That song has extra special meaning as I have just recently become a father myself, and I have to agree that I am not ever going to raise a child that does, “The work of villains, the will of fools.”
The one thing I do miss about this album that we get relatively often from the Foo Fighters is a really bombastic guitar riff or even just a huge vocal that drives to the heart of a song and sets the tone for the rest of the album.
Some notable examples of this would be “Monkey Wrench” (guitar) on The Colour and Shape and “Best of You” (vocal) from In Your Honor - to name just a couple.
I think the song that comes closest to this concept on this album would probably be “Medicine At Midnight,” and that’s probably why it is the title track. The guitar solo in the song really made me happy as well. It’s not always that we get a decent amount of guitar solo in a Foo Fighters track.
Another sweet solo on "Holding Poison" is a great addition as well.
I think the only thing that throws the album off of that style is the fact that Grohl himself said he was trying to create a bit more a dance album that would get people to get up and move out of their seats (from a 2020 interview with NME).
Overall, this album is very enjoyable. The only thing I would say that leaves me longing for more is the straight fact that this album is only 9 songs long running about 36 minutes.
Give us more, guys! Ha ha.
All that said, I suppose it wouldn’t be good to just release more songs just for the sake of it if they aren’t good.
On the flip side, I think the Foo Fighters have put out like 200,000 songs already, and I have thoroughly enjoyed pretty much all of them.
If you haven’t taken the time to check out this album, I highly recommend it. It’s an early contender for album of the year, for sure, but then again, pretty much every album of theirs has been one of the best albums for their respective years.
That’s the power of the Foo.
There are pieces of this album that harken back to The Colour and The Shape, in my opinion (which I would say is hands down the best Foo Fighters album).
Namely the song "Chasing Birds" reminds me a lot of some of the slower songs on that album (like "February Stars" and "Up in Arms").
"Holding Poison" has some remnants of "Monkey Wrench" and "Wind Up" to my ear as well.
If you are a fan of the Foo Fighters, then you won't be mad at this album. If you are not a fan of them, then you are living your life all wrong.