Year in Rock 2011 Nominee: Foo Fighters

FOO FIGHTERS
White Limo

From: Wasting Light
Released: April 12

Resonating with the warmth of the analog tape it was recorded on and benefiting from some of the band's best songwriting ever, Wasting Light is a hulking slab of rock the likes of which we don't see very often anymore.  Maybe it's because it was produced by Butch Vig, maybe Dave Grohl had the 20th anniversary of Nevermind on the brain.  Maybe Grohl was simply sick of hearing people say the Foos had gotten soft after 2009 single Wheels became a crossover smash.  Whatever the case, Wasting Light grabs you by the throat from the jagged opening salvo of Burning Bridges, and doesn't let go until after the soaring Walk's final note rings out.

In between, the album is chock full of Grohl's uncanny sense of melody; it's a gift that has spawned more hits than you could have fit on their 2009 greatest hits album.  On Wasting Light, though, that gift for melody is filtered through a wall of guitars and howls.  Even the quietest moments (the lamenting I Should Have Known, for example) eventually boil over and explode into a hail of distortion.

Honestly, I could have chosen just about any song from Wasting Light to illustrate how awesome it is.  I chose White Limo because it perfectly shows the point I just talked about from the other side.  So as to say, even when the album is at its most muscular and menacing (such is the case on White Limo), there's that gift for melody at play just under that surface of grime.

At the end of the day, here's what I take away from Wasting Light: it's hard to keep a band together long enough to put out a greatest hits.  It's even rarer to have that hits collection with a fair number of hits that didn't make the tracklisting.  Rarest of all is the band that puts out that hits collection and then, rather than disbanding or fading into obscurity like so many do, follows it up with the greatest album of their career.