The Download Downlow
by Mike Conklin‘Best of You’
My brother-in-law once shared with me his opinion that Dave Grohl seems like an incredibly likable guy, and I’ve since come around to agree wholeheartedly. You know he likes good music, because even before Nirvana, he was bumming around D.C. with seminal post-rockers Scream, so that’s certainly a plus. But beyond that, he’s exactly the kind of celebrity celebrity-haters can learn to love. Why? Because he deals with his fame the way we think we would if we were as lucky: he laughs about it, fully acknowledging the ridiculousness of the whole damn thing. At the same time, though, he doesn’t disrespect it. He knows he’s been given the opportunity to live a life most people don’t even waste time dreaming about anymore, and he’s making the best of it. He formed a death metal band because he felt like it, made a record with Tenacious D because he probably thinks they’re funny as shit, just like we do. And now, he’s committing one of the cardinal sins of rock stardom: he’s releasing the dreaded double album — just because he can.
The record is called In Your Honor (apparently in honor of John Kerry), and disc one features the band doing pretty much exactly what they’ve been doing for a decade. They play loud, guitar-driven rock music that’s just slightly more complex and genuinely visceral than the rest of the crap clogging up airwaves all over the world, but just as catchy. The second disc is more of an experiment for the Foos, who, for the first time, have made it a point to make an all-acoustic record. In a somewhat annoyingly safe move, the first single from the record comes from the first disc. It’s called ‘Best of You’ and, like all their other singles, it will satisfy longtime fans and do little to earn new ones.
Chances are, the softer disc is fairly mediocre too, and taken in all at once, In Your Honor is probably too much to handle. It’s okay, though, because by being a seemingly decent human being, Dave Grohl has made mediocrity completely acceptable.
– Available at iTunes for 99 cents
