Foo Fighters: Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace (2LP) [ROSWELL]

Why you'll love it

This 2LP set gives each of the album's four moods its own side. It topped the charts in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Austria, won the Grammy for Best Rock Album and took the Brit Award for Best International Album.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Pressed in the USA

About the album

Sometimes the best advice comes from the boss. Dave Grohl told RCA's Clive Davis it would be great if a band could play both acoustic and electric shows to different crowds, and Davis suggested doing both together. Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace is what happened next.

Grohl brought back producer Gil Norton, who'd made The Colour and the Shape, to push the band out of their comfort zone, and the demos ranged from punk blasts to country shuffles to piano ballads. "The Pretender" is a full-throttle opener, "Let It Die" builds from a whisper to a roar, and "Long Road to Ruin" is a sunny, singalong rocker. "Stranger Things Have Happened" and "Home" show the softer side, while "Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners" is a dazzling acoustic instrumental. Grohl wrote with a new reflective streak, inspired partly by the birth of his daughter, and the lyrics aim straight at the people singing them back from the crowd.

It's the Foos at their most varied, a band trying everything at once and getting away with it. Clive Davis, we assume, took the credit graciously.

Also at Kops: more Foo Fighters on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Roswell / RCA (cat# 88697 11516-1), the 2007 album.