Recent stints playing celebrity sticksman with Queens Of The Stone Age and Nine Inch Nails, or marshalling a regiment of extreme metalโ€™s great and good in 2004โ€™s Probot project have confirmed Dave Grohlโ€™s reputation as one of rockโ€™s great dilettantes. Faintly flabbergasting, then, to realise that Foo Fighters โ€“ usually billed as โ€œDave Grohlโ€™s post-Nirvana outfitโ€, or something equally short on fanfare โ€“ is this year celebrating its tenth anniversary.

Grohl, however, is aware of the Foosโ€™ vintage. In Your Honour, he claims, is intended as a career landmark of the stripe of Led Zeppelinโ€™s Physical Graffiti: an eclectic, heavyweight double-album, a โ€œdefinitiveโ€ work. Sporting a concept (one โ€˜rockโ€™ disc, one โ€˜acousticโ€™), a vague theme (the US Presidential Election), and a guestlist that should befuddle any attendant mosher kids (the Zepโ€™s John Paul Jones plays piano and mandolin on โ€œMiracleโ€ and โ€œAnother Roundโ€ respectively, Norah Jones turns up for โ€˜Virginia Moonโ€™, a sweet duet borne along on jazzy, brushed drums), itโ€™s unquestionably the work of a band with ambitions rekindled.

Advertisement

While the opening salvo of In Your Honour is clearly inspired by Grohlโ€™s experiences supporting John Kerry on the trail, not even the souring of the Democrat dream has sullied its triumphalist edge. Such is the Foosโ€™ talent for breezy, one-size-fits-all optimism that even the unambiguous likes of โ€œNo Way Backโ€ (โ€œPleased to meet you, shake my hand/There is no way back from hereโ€) work outside their original context. Grohlโ€™s dogged pleasantness, however, occasionally proves his Achillesโ€™ Heel. โ€œHellโ€ and โ€œFree Meโ€ do the Hรผsker Dรผ with entertaining vigour, but by the close of Disc One, youโ€™re hunkering for some light and shade.

Luckily, Disc Two mostly delivers. โ€œFriend Of A Friendโ€, penned on a Nirvana tour back in 1992, is an uncharacteristically spiked critique of slackerdom that bears an eerie Cobain influence. Meanwhile, the chiming โ€œCold Day In The Sunโ€, fronted by drummer Taylor Hawkins, is a Ringo moment thatโ€™s pretty enough not to knock matters off course. And given the potential perils and pitfalls of the double-album, thatโ€™s surely enough to chalk this one up as a success.

By Louis Pattison