On Desert Island Albums, Pt. 3

If you were forced to live on a desert island with only a record/CD player, what albums would you take with you? I've played this game a hundred times, both online and IRL. I think I have my list pretty well figured out at this point, but since we've got a whole year together on this here blog, I figure this will give me a little more space to explain my picks.


It sure sounds like the Foo Fighters are going away for a while. Dave Grohl has hinted at this already, but anytime you post something like this on Facebook...

Official band announcement tomorrow night. Stay tuned.
Posted by Foo Fighters on Tuesday, March 1, 2016

...you're going to send people in an awful tizzy. (As of the start of this writing, that official announcement has yet to be made. Maybe they're waiting until 11:59, or maybe it's the West Coast thing, or maybe they're still figuring out what to announce. "It is with heavy hearts that we say goodbye...to BORING BAGELS, thanks to our brand-new 'Pat Schmear Bagel Spreads!' Ready to ROCK your breakfast, now in the band store...")

If the Foos do take a couple years off, it wouldn't be the first time; after touring for Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace and releasing a greatest hits compilation, the band announced an "indefinite hiatus" in 2009. Grohl banged around in Them Crooked Vultures, drummer Taylor Hawkins started Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders, and the rest of the guys did...well, whatever it is they did. But the quintet was right back at it in 2011 with Wasting Light, my favorite Foo Fighters album.

Yes, The Colour and the Shape is their classic with three of their seminal tunes. Yes, their eponymous debut is the purist's choice. No, there probably isn't one individual track on Wasting Light that I'd put in the top 5 Foo Fighters songs of all time. So overall, this doesn't sound like a good pick by me. I know.

But dammit, I just like this album a lot. Front to back, there isn't a single bad song on it. It grabs hold with "Bridges Burning" and "Rope" and doesn't let you go from the wild ride until "I Should Have Known" and "Walk" finally release you. It's the best rock album the band has made, bar none.

Every song is Foo Fighters to the core, but with individual flashes and flares of other bands and styles. Fresh off his side project with old pal Josh Homme, Grohl howls through "White Limo" like Nick Oliveri used to in early Queens of the Stone Age days. The verses in "Dear Rosemary" dance/shuffle along like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. There's even something Beatles-esque about the melancholy "I Should Have Known."

And yet, "Walk" and "These Days" are quintessential Foo Fighters tunes - they could have written them in their sleep, and yet they're so damn good, the perfect combination of . The album was supposedly recorded in Grohl's garage, but Dave Grohl's garage is not like my garage or your garage. It's the Taj Mahal of rock garages. The album is well-produced, with guitars buzzing and shimmering when needed, and the whole effort has that professional snap you get after nearly 20 years of playing together.

If this next Foo Fighters hiatus yields anything close to what Wasting Light did, then dammit, bring on a hiatus.

(UPDATE: By the conclusion of this writing, the "official announcement" came out, and...well, alright, good show, guys)