When I was in fourth grade, I bought my first album. By that I mean I personally went out and bought my first album, myself. Granted, I got a ride from my parents and used the allowance money that they had given me, but it was all me. That album was the Foo Fighters' The Colour And The Shape. With that said, there is no inherent bias in this review, I promise.
I took my seat in the sold-out arena and did what I had to do in an arena—justify being there. Was I betraying my puritanical, collegiate indie-rock sensibilities by being in such a big place with a demographic I'm not used to being around? No no no, they're the Foo Fighters; everyone likes the Foo Fighters, it's okay. A mid-twenties man took his seat to my left and started to converse with his friend about the last Dave Matthews Band concert he attended, and to my right, two older men talked about the many Nirvana shows they'd seen. Never would it have been so malapropos to strike up a conversation with, "So how about that St. Vincent concert last week?"
After tackling my seeming anxiety of where I was, I realized I was in for a ride. The Foos are notorious for three-hour sets, jam sessions, and general ballsiness. Their lighting rig was stadium caliber, and ninety percent of the audience was wearing merch they just bought. When the band took the stage, the audience erupted with "I LOVE YOU"s, and the GA went into a frenzy.
The Foos opened with two cuts from their newest album, Wasting Light, all the while Dave Grohl started to run up and down a catwalk, shout at the audience sans microphone, probably saying something REALLY cool. In 50 years, colleges will probably offer a course that analyzes how awesome Dave Grohl is. On the last night of a world tour, his screaming went above and beyond screaming standards, his crowd interaction was exceedingly impressive (for example, starting a wave in the stadium using only his stare), and his black shirt was appropriately sweaty by the third song.
After those couple of tunes, they blasted into "My Hero," "Learn To Fly," "The Pretender" and about fifteen other songs that made the audience blow out their voices by singing/screaming along. Each song was strategically rearranged to a live setting, getting quieter for the audience sing-alongs, and getting longer to indulge the band in straight-up hard-rock jam sessions bordering on a Deep Purple or Tom Petty show.
The band powered through the stadium rock tropes—there was a catwalk down the middle that led to a rising stage that Grohl had a solo duel on. Taylor Hawkins channeled Animal with his drumming prowess only to take it down a notch on the one song he sings. The latest single, "Walk," showed its merits as an arena-rock-anthem, and the band waited ten minutes before coming out for a six-song encore, acoustic set included and all.
All-in-all, there doesn't need to be any justification for attending a Foo Fighters concert. The band rocks hard, the new songs rock hard, and the old songs rock harder. The band knows how to keep an enormous audience in their grasp, and the crowd knows how to reciprocate the energy.
The Joy Formidable opened, only to have their name mispronounced by both bands following them. The 100 people in the audience when they started were treated to 25 minutes of pure noise-rock bliss, punctuated by juxtaposing gentle vocals and Ritzy Bryan's ever-imposing barrages of guitar noise. The double bass pedal drums brought out the prog nerd in me, no less than three bass strings were played at once, and the set ended with a large gong being wailed on by a guitar. I think that says enough.
