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Fifteen years after Nirvana’s abrupt and violent conclusion pushed Dave Grohl to finally lead his own band, the Foo Fighters release their Greatest Hits. Does this collection, which includes two new songs, add up to more than the sum of its parts? We threw on our Ultimate Ears 700 headphones to find out…
The Foo Fighters are modern rock’s quintessential singles band, so Greatest Hits is a perfect vehicle for them. While their second album, 1997’s The Colour And The Shape, is a coherent work, most of their records rest on a handful of killer singles.
From the big, dumb rock brilliance of debut, This Is A Call, to later smashes like Learn To Fly and All My Life, Dave Grohl has proved he understands two things implicitly – how to write a massive riff and how to pen a singalong chorus.
The Foo Fighters’ Greatest Hits is like a series of perfectly delivered combo punches, hit after hit with songs like Monkeywrench still capable of delivering a knockout blow.
The only arguable downside of Foo Fighters – Greatest Hits is the irritating decision not to sequence the album chronologically. It’s a cardinal sin when it comes to greatest hits records, and one which left us a bit disorientated as we relived our youth listening from start to finish.
Greatest Hits is clearly not a record designed to appeal to hardcore fans of the Foo Fighters. If you love them, you’ll own all these songs and will simply download the few rather fine new tracks (Wheels and Words Forward) separately.
However, with Christmas glittering on the horizon, Greaest Hits – Foo Fighters is the perfect collection to introduce a loved one to the band’s indisputable batch of cracking tunes. As a purchase for yourself, however, it’ll depend largely how many of these Foos tracks already have a home on your MP3 player.
To the uninitiated, however, we say: fire up your iPod Touch, sling on a pair of Bose QuietComfort 15 headphones and immerse yourself in 16 classic modern rock anthems.
Oh and be sure to grab New Way Home from The Colour And The Shape as a bonus. It is quite possibly the best final song on an ’90s rock record.
Foo Fighters – Greatest Hits is out now.
[...] and the band’s guitar attack. However the tracklist is extremely obvious and, as with the Foo Fighters: Greatest Hits, Queen Absolute Greatest opts to avoid chronological order. If this collection is intended for [...]