I'm Not Scared

Foo Fighters - The Colour and the Shape

(10th Anniversary Reissue)

RCA/Roswell/Legacy; 2007

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Despite their last three albums, the Foo Fighters are my favorite band. And even if they weren't, this album - The Colour and the Shape - would still be my favorite. Not only did it hit me at that tender early musical development phase, but it's just so damned good. At any moment, I can hum the first note of "Doll" with perfect pitch. I remember when I mistakenly bought it off a classmate for ten bucks, confusing it with a different album. I remember laying awake at night with this in my headphones. This is still the album to which I measure up everything else. It has wonderful melodies, interesting song structures and more interesting transitions from song to song (true album construction), perfect use of dynamics (huge dynamic variety while maintaining continuity and avoiding cliche loud/soft/loud), and just about perfect layering of controlled noises that build to waves of sound, then recede to sensitive soft bits.

After this album, I waited two years to be rewarded with disappointment. Then a couple more years, and even bigger disappointment. Repeat. Each following album they released seemed more lazy (yet somehow more pretentiously ambitious) than the last. I started acting on the belief that what made this album great, truly great, was not exclusively the Foo Fighter material, but also the hand of the producer. With each lazy, mostly self-produced album, I got more and more frustrated and wished that they would get back together with Gil Norton (who also did great stuff with the Pixies and Counting Crows).

It's worth mentioning that the one thing that has helped me maintain any shred of faith in this, my favorite band, has been seeing them live. In a live setting they always manage to take a limp studio recording and really make it into what it was meant to be, be it hard rocking or acoustically. Maybe they're still good musicians who just don't have the self-recording skills? I mean, that one Grohl-produced Verbena album wasn't all that great, either.

Then I heard two news bits simultaneously: 1) The Foo Fighters would be releasing a remastered TCATS including B-sides and the long-lost title track, and 2) they were back in the studio with TCATS producer GIL NORTON. I just about shit myself.

As for the new package: the digipack reissue is surprisingly modest, which is the only real reason I bring it up at all. Unlike other reissues in my collection (Hellbilly Deluxe, Blind Faith), this stays mostly true to the original design, including a slightly different set of band photos and an interesting and honest if not completely heartfelt note from none other than... Nate Mendel, the only remaining member of the group from the TCATS lineup who isn't Dave Grohl. In the note, Mendel notes that TCATS is pretty much the Foo Fighters measuring stick, and admits the necesity of a producer who will really push a band (Just about shitting myself again). Also, you know those square pieces of paper that advertise cell phone ring tones or other crap like that? The one that fell out of this particular digipack sleeve boldly announces, in all the same sized, classic TCATS font:

NEW STUDIO ALBUM
FALL 2007
PRODUCED BY GIL NORTON

I seem to be the exact audience they're shooting for.

As for the new remaster of the disc: it's pretty good. I didn't realize before that my original disc is actually sort of muddy. This new take is surprisingly clear without changing the weight or emphasis of the original production. I was afraid that cleaning up the old tapes might actually thin out the heavier guitar parts, but it's not much of a problem.

As for the "new" songs: all six were released in some form or another, mostly as B-sides on obscure foreign singles, including four decent covers and two Foo Fighter originals. I already had "Baker Street" and "Dear Lover" on the My Hero import single, as do most fans, I'd expect. The real gem is the title track "The Colour and the Shape," which was only released on one part of the very limited, two-part Monkeywrench single. I mistakenly paid way too much for the wrong one, and had been dying to hear this song (searching P2P software for an elusive title track is entirely fruitless). It's pretty good; it's quite loud, and was probably a first-take recording as it lacks the polish, restraint, and complexity that the rest of the album tracks have. While I'm glad to now have the track in my collection, I'm glad it was cut from the album proper. If nothing else, I'm glad to have these six extra songs collected in one place.

As for the upcoming album: as usual, I'm excited. That's par for the course on the release of a new Foo Fighter album. But after three lazy albums, I should be pretty burnt out. I suppose what I'm really excited about is the possibility of chemistry between a band that I love and the producer that gave them their golden moment. After all, like I pointed out above, I seem to be the exact audience they're shooting for.

VR and BR

I was working in Omaha just about three years ago. One day, it was a Tuesday, I went on down to Homer's Music in the Old Market to pick two brand-new, hot-off-the-press releases that I was, in fact, very excited about: newly formed supergroup Velvet Revolver's Libertad and long-standing superpunkgroup Bad Religion's The Empire Strikes First. I was totally stoked, and didn't let the hipster record store worker guy's comments about commercialism faze my excitement. After some contemplative listening, I eventually reached a sort of self-imposed ambivalence, deciding that while I wasn't completely taken by either effort, I wouldn't allow myself to be completely let down.

Now, it's three years later. I know that I can't be the only person who noticed the coincidence of both bands releasing their next albums within a week of each other - first Libertad and then New Maps of Hell. I'm not suggesting conspiracy or anything, but I think maybe rock stars shouldn't be so obvious when releasing obligatory albums, be the obligation financial, contractual, or simply "for the kids" (duly noted that Bad Religion is one year behind their clockwork biennial album-release schedule). Also, neither band shows much variety in regards to album cover color schemes, though to VR's credit, this graphic doesn't do the oh-so-shiny foil-punched cover justice. At any rate, I forced myself to get excited.

So I've given these two new albums another fair shake, and I still sort of don't care. I mean, I know that I like both of these bands, right? Both Bad Religion and Stone Temple Pilots were musical heroes for me spanning high school and college phases (I haven't ever cared about GnR, and yes, VR has taken a step closer to STP with this most recent release, but not enough of one for me to really fall in love). Both VR and BR remain true to what they are (read: stick to their formulas). Velvet Revolver takes the catchy and not too poppy melodies of Scott Weiland and mashes them up against fist-pumpingly stupid 80's arena rock guitar mush. Bad Religion is a "word band" with the anti-everything message smushed into loads of factory-produced guitar wall and trademark vocal harmonies.

These are gross simplifications, of course. But really, neither of these bands are doing anything new at all. VR has taken all of the rock star out of rock star and replaced it with all the easy-cheese of Bon Jovi for just about the same effect. Weiland is supposed to be wild and is not, and Slash is supposed to be an icon, and is not. At least it's catchy. BR has stuck so faithfully to their formula that I wonder why they're even recording new songs any more. I mean, everything has sounded so much the same (melodies, not production) in the song-writing department that I wonder if they're simply pro-toolsing old riffs together. In fact, I think I heard these exact guitar-slides on The Process of Belief.

I have something nice to say: Libertad isn't as all-out loud as Contraband was, and that's sort of refreshing. This is a sign, along with better song structures and an overall more intimate experience, that Velvet Revolver is a real band now, and not just Scott Weiland singing over GnR instrumentals in order to pump out product to a still rock-hungry consuming public (maybe that Homer's hipster is shining through in me as well). Yes, they have gelled into something more fully resembling a band, but it's a much less cool band than one might have expected. It is, in fact, catchy, and is occasionally decent (I'm ignoring the fact that the last song - Gravedancer, reminds me a lot of Queen's Fat Bottomed Girls).

The one difference that separates New Maps of Hell from the previous six or seven Bad Religion albums (and I really do like most of those six or seven) is the production. Despite the fact that pretty much everything they've recorded has been melodically and structurally the same for a decade and a half, the layering of sound is different on each release. Stranger Than Fiction and The Grey Race come off as hard-rocking alternative, The New America (an unfortunate title they really should have saved for post 9/11 releases) sounds thin and wimpy (it sounds like shit, frankly), The Process of Belief sounds huge and reverby and a little washy. Though boring overall, Empire is HUGE and RAW, due to loud-assed guitars and fantastic drumming (new drummer added). I thought maybe they learned something from Empire, and I was wrong. The New Maps production is terrible - the vocals are way, way, way too soft behind the guitars, and there is absolutely nothing interesting in the guitars. Power chord/Gibson through Marshall never sounded so boring. Seriously. When I turn up the speakers in order to hear Graffin's somewhat literate and thought-provoking words - I'm overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the fat and lazy guitar.

I know that if I really give either of these albums extensive time I'll likely fall in love with them, just like I did with that one CD from NoFX. They each have their hooks. It took a while to get into STP's No. 4, and my deep love for The Grey Race didn't happen upon first listen (except for those super-awesome transitions towards the end - Spirit Shine/Streets of America and Victory/Drunk Sincerity/Come Join Us - that part is totally awesome). Benefit of the doubt given, and I can see the possibility of coming to like this stuff. But that would draw time away from other music that I chose to care much more about. Self-imposed ambivalence again. I will come back.

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WARNING: Under no circumstances should you watch the video that comes as a "bonus" to Libertad. It sucks and is pointless, and actually triggered my gag reflex more than once.