The Best of You: The Foos refused to play favorites in making In Your Honor a double album, so I refuse to play favorites here. In a rock album that occasionally veers into all-bark-no-bite territory, “Free Me” delivers on the band’s promise of aggression. The chiming chords of its insistent, cascading riff open the song with restraint, and once the band’s barrage of guitars begin to ignite, a slowed pause between verses ups the tension.
The song doesn’t truly explode until halfway through, when Grohl finally unleashes his famous, throat-tearing roar. Foo Fighters have gotten a lot of mileage out of the yelling-over-loud-guitars songwriting guidebook, but “Free Me” makes the best of this strategy with a melody ferocious enough to warrant the vocal, rather than one reliant on it to stand up.
Of course, building a song around a scream can make it difficult to execute in a live setting, which is probably why “Free Me” didn’t make it onto many Foo Fighters setlists following the In Your Honor touring cycle.
Which brings us to the album’s other standout, “Friend of a Friend.” The existence of “Friend of a Friend” on In Your Honor is a treat for Foo Fighters fans in itself. Written in 1990 shortly after Grohl joined Nirvana, the song originally appeared on the minimally circulated 1992 Pocketwatch cassette tape Grohl released under the pseudonym Late! before he re-recorded it for Foo Fighters over a decade later.
The first acoustic number he ever wrote, “Friend of a Friend” documents Grohl’s first impressions of Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic over a stark, back-and-forth riff, just guitar and vocals. The artist’s observations are just as straightforward as his music, and at once, you can picture the young band of misfits, pre-fame, just trying to navigate adulthood.
“He’s never been in love/ But he knows just what love is/ He says, ‘Nevermind’/ And no one speaks,” Grohl croons about one friend. Later, he turns to the other: “He thinks he drinks too much/ ‘Cause when he tells his two best friends/ ‘I think I drink too much’/ No one speaks.” While the 2005 recording ups the key of the song and Raskulinecz’s production smooths the gritty, lo-fi feel of the original, the power of young Grohl’s unvarnished poetry remains intact. It’s a gift to be let into something so personal. And yes, we know that’s two best songs.
The Pretender: You know what they say about letting the drummer sing. Taylor Hawkins original “Cold Day in the Sun” leans heavy into feel-good, Southern California soft rock, and while the drummer’s voice has a nice rasp, 1970s AM radio is not a vibe Foo Fighters wear well.
Stacked to the Rafters: Unsurprisingly, anthemic lead single “Best of You” became In Your Honor’s biggest hit, spending 33 weeks on Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Airplay Chart and four weeks in the chart’s No. 1 spot. In a way, the song summarizes Foo Fighters’ niche in modern rock; at once overly earnest and affecting, the song nudges its way into your brain, irks you with its incessant chorus, and, after some time apart, manages to charm you all over again. (You try watching the band perform the song live, slow down at the bridge, and allow the audience to belt out its “Oh oh oh/ Oh oh oh” breakdown without feeling a greater connection to the human race.)
Grohl has come to lean on the shout-vaguely-inspiring-lyrics-over-loud-guitars trick since he realized he could make a ton of money from it, but the chanted bridge of “Best of You” — “Has someone taken your faith/ It’s real/ The pain you feel” — features the type of prevailing sweetness that only the first of its kind can claim. Also, we can’t forget that it spawned the meme to end all memes:
Them Balloons Are Pretty Big: At the 2006 Grammy Awards, In Your Honor was nominated for Best Rock Album and Best Surround Sound Album, while “Best of You” received Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal nods, and the Norah Jones-featuring “Virginia Moon” was recognized in the Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals category. Unfortunately, it didn’t take home any golden trophies — making it the first Foo Fighters album since 1997’s The Colour and the Shape to lose out at the ceremony. It did rank at #30 in Rolling Stone’s list of the top albums of the year. Shrug.
When I Sing Along with You: “Can you hear me? Hear me screaming?” Dave Grohl asks on In Your Honor’s opening title track. The answer, overwhelmingly, was yes, and we haven’t been able to stop hearing him scream since. In Your Honor signaled the beginning of a new era for Foo Fighters, the first in a series of albums bogged down by gimmicks that emphasized a concept or a challenge over a strong batch of quality songs.
Here, the challenge was in dynamics; in a double album, 10 songs would thrash among Foo Fighters’ heaviest, while the other 10 would soothe the burns with gentle acoustic excursions. On its face, In Your Honor does its job, at least in terms of volume. But even a rock band with expert control over loud-quiet dynamics can find it hard to keep things fully interesting over an 80-minute runtime.
Grohl’s been screaming since Foo Fighters began, but on In Your Honor, the band relies on his (admittedly great) roar a bit too heavily at times. The agreeable nature of Grohl’s songwriting fares better on the album’s acoustic half, where prettiness is to be expected. Beyond the unflappable optimism of “Miracle” and the steadfast friendship of “On the Mend,” Side B’s most memorable moments come in the instances when Grohl tries out seriousness.
“Still” opens the second half with eerie keys and droning, tolling bass, as the singer recounts the true story of a child in his hometown committing suicide by laying on train tracks. “Nevermind, what’s done is done,” he sings, for once cool and detached rather than exceedingly charismatic. Here, Foo Fighters really succeed at doing something different, even if the album doesn’t always hit those same heights. — Carys Anderson
