Foo Fighters - Medicine at Midnight | Alexis Petridis's album of the week

The Guardian 0

(RCA/Roswell Records)
Dave Grohl’s band keep changing their methods but the results sound the same, even as they aim at David Bowie disco on their first LP since 2017

There are artists who survive through perpetual reinvention, constantly surprising their audience at every turn, and then there are artists who trade in reliability. Twenty-six years into their career, Foo Fighters very much belong to the latter category.

Every two or three years a new album comes out, promoted by a tour of the world’s biggest venues, and magazine covers featuring Dave Grohl pulling the face he pulls on magazine covers: brow furrowed, teeth bared. It’s not a comparison you hear very often, but there’s a sense in which they’re the American version of Oasis: a putatively alternative band dealing in a punk-ish take on rock classicism and beloved of people who presumably want to know exactly what they’re getting before they shell out for, or at the very least stream, a new album.