Album reviews: Foo Fighters | Ringo Starr | Angelique Kidjo | They Might Be Giants
The latest ‘powder keg of songs’ from Foo Fighters is characteristically explosive, writes Fiona Shepherd
Foo Fighters: Your Favorite Toy (Roswell Records/Columbia Records) ★★★
Ringo Starr: Long Long Road (Ume) ★★
Angelique Kidjo: HOPE!! (Warner Music France) ★★★
They Might Be Giants: The World Is To Dig (Idlewild Recordings) ★★★
The grieving - musically, at least - is over and it’s time for Foo Fighters to move into the next phase of rocking operations. Previous album, But Here We Are, was a de facto requiem for drummer Taylor Hawkins, who passed away in 2022. Frontman Dave Grohl manned the kit for that one. But all things must pass and Foo Fighters have found themselves a potent new sticksman. Ilan Samuel Rubin is a good 20 years younger than his bandmates but with ample experience in Nine Inch Nails, Paramore and Lostprophets. He may not be able to fill the Grohl sidekick role, nor is he expected to, but he can consummately fuel the charge behind this “powder keg of songs”.
At 36 minutes short, Your Favorite Toy is a brief, explosive dispatch, almost back to basics from its punk collage sleeve to its feral energy. Grohl musters his best hardcore punk scream to kickstart Caught in the Echo, which resolves into a more mainstream rock stormer on echo chambers, competing perspectives and divisive debates by the time it reaches the chorus.
Of All People continues the punky thrust, with its hookline “of all people you survived” sounding more like an accusation than an encouragement. They let some light in on the softer, slower Window, graced with a glam guitar sound, before indulging in the messy garage fun of the title track with its goading chorus “Hear that, boy? Someone threw away your favourite toy”.
If You Only Knew is a more conventional retro rocker, its terse riffola giving way to a looser rhythm. Rubin demonstrates his worth on the restless, fidgety groove of Spit Shine, a song pacing the floor but still with some pop chops while Amen, Cavemen is another throwback from a band who can’t resist a Cheap Trick-like power pop chorus.
They climax with the hardcore, industrial thrust of Asking For a Friend, which allows for some lyrical angst (“what is real, I’m asking for a friend, or is this the end?”) before the helter skelter hurtle to the finish, with demons duly exorcised.
According to his producer and collaborator T Bone Burnett, Ringo Starr is an honorary Texan, naturally suited to the Americana-flavoured material on Long Long Road. He can certainly command a crack band of country players and some top drawer cameos from roots guitarist Billy Strings to vocalist Molly Tuttle. The latter appears on pleasing pimped-up bluegrass duet Returning Without Tears and comes out in sympathy on the tear-in-his-beer ballad She’s Gone, while St Vincent guests on the cosmic country of Choose Love and Sheryl Crow adds harmony vocals to the title track. In his curatorial role, Burnett has also unearthed a rare Carl Perkins tune, I Don’t See You In My Eyes Anymore, for Starr’s delectation.
Angelique Kidjo’s latest album is also awash with collaborators, from MOR songwriter Diane Warren to the Soweto Gospel Choir, while Pharrell Williams produces three tracks, including the commercial soul pop of Bando, its seam of melancholy brightened by brass and percussive rhythms. Nile Rodgers shreds in inimitable funky style on Oyaya, with extra energy boost from Brazilian singer Iza, while next generation Nigerian singer Ayra Starr and high life duo The Cavemen dig into the West African grooves of Aye Kan and I’m On Fire respectively. The irony is that Kidjo needs no assistance to bring that fire, cheerleading in lusty form on No Stopping Us.
Eclectic duo They Might Be Giants present 18 short and bittersweet missives on their umpteenth album of spontaneous joy, teaming sardonic lyrics with big strings on Back in Los Angeles, paying offbeat tribute to Staten Island hip-hop legends on Wu-Tang in the style of joyous harmony-laden power pop and covering all stations from bold and brassy rhythm’n’blues to French language garage pop en route.
CLASSICAL
Seán Morgan-Rooney: A Few Reflect the Heart (Delphian) ★★★★
Delphian is doing a fine trade in concept albums. Among the latest is Irish pianist-composer Seán Morgan-Rooney’s A Few Reflect the Heart, centred on Ravel’s five coruscating Miroirs, spread within a personally reflective sequence of Morgan-Rooney’s own works - he calls them “element pieces“ representing air, fire, earth and water - and sympathetic examples by Berio, Stravinsky and Péter Eötvös. The Ravel performances are exquisite, wistfully tantalising. A scene-setting electroacoustic Overture by Morgan-Rooney - snatches of Ravel moodily integrated within an electronic soundscape - establishes the pianist’s composer signature. Pneumaplume casts an ethereal airborne spell; Wavephile a watery lugubriousness in the wake of Berio's Wasserklavier; Ignis Beat a fiery unpredictability that segues explosively into Stravinsky’s The Firebird. Meanwhile Earth-tether-ether makes a mystically profound follow-up to Ravel’s sonorous La vallée des cloches. All of this is imaginatively-themed and quirky to boot. Ken Walton
FOLK
Kris Drever: Doing This For Love (The North Sound) ★★★★★
Guitarist and singer-songwriter Kris Drever leaves tradition well behind, spinning considered, enigmatic tales couched in beguiling lyrics. From the heartfelt title track, compounding love song with diurnal slog, Drever is richly accompanied by musicians including vocalists Rachel Lightbody and Rachel Sermanni, bassist Euan Burton, drummer Louis Abbott and Matthew Herd on Mellotron and saxophone. However capricious his lyrics, Drever delivers them with convincing clarity, as in Magic Friend, “who puts the music on the breeze / maybe the salt in the cellar / maybe the leaves in the trees”; or in Does Your Sleep Feel Like Rest: “I went searching for myself / I didn’t find anything / no bone comb, cave painting.” He closes with Catterline, his poignant tribute to Joan Eardley, evoking her twin inspirational worlds of Townhead street kids and Aberdeenshire fishing village, as well as a creative life cut short. Jim Gilchrist
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