My Top 40 Albums - #26

#26
Foo Fighters - "The Colour and the Shape"

Year: 1997
Label: Roswell/Capitol
Favorite songs: Everlong, Monkey Wrench, My Hero, Wind Up, Hey Johnny Park
Lyric sample: "Too alarming now to talk about / Take your pictures down and shake it out / Truth or consequence, say it aloud / Use that evidence, race it around / There goes my hero / Watch him as he goes / There goes my hero / He's ordinary"

This is modern rock.

I'm kind of a casual fan of most of their stuff, but with The Colour and the Shape, Foo Fighters hit one out of the park. Their sophomore release, this will forever be the album by which future Foo Fighters releases are judged. Hopefully, it will be their best remembered as well. With hits like the emotional anthem "My Hero," haunting "Everlong" and punkish, energetic "Monkey Wrench," it probably features more great songs than any other single release. The defining characteristic, the one that makes me love it so much, is the unapologetically BIG sound. It's a roaring wave. The Color and The Shape sounds like it was played on 100 watt Marshall Tube stacks through Gibson Les Pauls while Dave Grohl bangs on the drums as hard as he possibly can. It's an enviable sonic assault that I can only wish more bands could achieve. Greater still, it's LOUD but not necessarily NOISY. The band is nearly always melodic and comes up with some really great riffs carrying the same crashing sound as everything else. Frontman Dave Grohl was the drummer for Nirvana, but this is very much a guitar record. No solos - there is still plenty of grunge influence hanging around - but soulful rhythms and nasty distorted goodness. Then there's Grohl's vocal. One of the grittiest voices in popular music, but oddly smooth in some of the more melodic passages and able to hit some really nice high notes. The likes of "Enough Space" and "My Poor Brain" feature some straightforward screams, while "See You" and "Up In Arms" are poppy little ditties that are held in rock territory by Grohl's strong approach. His powerful performances help lift the record out of the reach of any clawing mediocrity.

And there is some mediocrity clawing. The lyrics are really of very little importance most of the time. A few are poor, most are just enigmatic. In fact, they're at their best when you can't understand exactly what is being said. There are some interesting lines here and there and that's mostly the best you get. What we have here is a case of exceptional music completely overwhelming hit-and-miss lyrics. "Everlong" is one of the best rock songs of the 90's, and there's plenty more goodness surrounding it. For a modern rock aficionado, this is pretty much a must-hear. To me it is probably the greatest pure rock record on my top 100 list. Musically it hits very close to what I think is the ideal for the genre. That makes it a luminary.