"There is a river I found---"
- from "Something From Nothing"
In Sonic Highways, there is a man, and the man--broken and a little lost, but looking for answers to his questions, looking for deliverance-- (unwittingly) takes a journey. Something inside him has died, but something in him, too, knows that there is life in the death that has taken place, that there is something hidden in the undergrounds of the world that just might bring him back to life. Along the way, he encounters darkness, more questions, people who are lost in similar and different ways, epiphanies in the most ill-lighted of corners, love both found and lost. He encounters himself along the way, meets himself at the end of every path. Finally, he comes to terms with himself and rekindles the fire that has kept him going, despite the odds, the same fire, stronger now, that will keep him going, henceforth, and his journey comes full circle, in the very fact that he knows and looks forward to the fact that the journey will keep on being.
It is a typical enough story, the story of everyman, after all, but the beauty and grandeur of Sonic Highways is in keeping true with the themes it has set for itself, in delineating a story with a beginning, a rising action, a climax, a denoument, and an ending. Each song is connected both to and with the next one, and each listen brings with it a discovery, so that one can spend entire hours on it, and not get tired of doing so. The words are in keeping with the music, which is brilliantly-written--thanks to the genius of Dave Grohl--and flawlessly-executed, thanks to the talent, skill, and passion of the entire Foo Fighters. The arrangements are dynamic, the riffs play up the narrative, the drumbeats provide both backdrop and heightened action. Sonic Highways is a phenomenal work of music, unabashedly different, and with enough richness as to leave the listener more than satisfied, even with only eight songs in the stash, because the music fleshes out the themes and this sort of thing necessitates a repeat listen, and another, and another.
The one flaw (and another good thing going for it, if you will) in Sonic Highways is that the songs would not be able to stand to their full height without the others. The album is unapologetically contextual, and something gets lost when one song is taken from the other, leaving the listener turning the song over for something more and very possibly not finding, and thereby making the songs un-radio-friendly. Or maybe it's just me talking. I take off from the mistake I made of listening to "Something From Nothing" the moment it came out, and subsequently giving it my full judgement, without giving it the very benefit of the whole. It was only when I got to listen to Sonic Highways in entirety that I saw its richness. From that point, I started raving (mostly to myself) about it, and about the fact that everything now made sense (and what beautiful sense it was!), the way that almost nothing of it did with my "Something From Nothing" one-bite experience.
There were undercurrents of a narrative in Wasting Light, but the Foo Fighters' use of the story-telling device comes full-blast in Sonic. The album excellently spells out the kind of evolution that Foo Fighters has proven itself capable of, time and again, the band's collective effort and incredible energy visible in the entire production. I would say that they have outdone themselves, this time, and have managed to put enough pressure on themselves as to spend the next few years bleeding their brains out in order to top this particular, border-defying work. But knowing Dave Grohl, I now counter my last statement by saying that it will never happen. There's no going dry with that madman. He is most definitely something else.
See if you find the story I did, and if you find something else, do share it with me.
"There is a secret
I found a secret--"
- from "I am a River"
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