Dave Grohl says the latest Foo Fighters record is “a party album”

The Foo Fighters have adopted a new sound for their upcoming studio album Medicine At Midnight, according to band frontman Dave Grohl.

Speaking about the record in an interview with NME, Grohl revealed that the band wanted to try “something that sounded fresh” to mark both their 10th album and 25th anniversary.

“We’ve made some many different types of albums – we’ve done acoustic things, we’ve done punk-rock things, mid-tempo Americana type of things,” the 51-year-old musician said. “We have a lot of albums to fall back on, so you just have to go with our gut feeling and I thought instead of making some mellow adult album, I thought ‘Fuck that, let’s make a party album’.”

Grohl elaborated further on what he meant by “a party album” by saying that the Foo’s new music draws from the “big grooves and riffs” of some of their favourite records.

“I hate to call it a funk or dance record, but it’s more energetic in a lot of ways than anything we’ve ever done and it was really designed to be that Saturday night party album,” he said.

“It was written and sequenced in a way that you put on, and nine songs later you’ll just put it on again,” he said. “Songs like Making A Fire. To me that’s rooted in Sly & The Family Stone grooves, but amplified in the way that the Foo Fighters do it.”

The band’s new sound, however, doesn’t mean that Medicine At Midnight will be bereft of more serious songs. Grohl also spoke about Waiting On A War, a tune that discusses the fear of impending nuclear war.

“Waiting On A War […] came from a feeling I had as a child, when I was terrified that we were heading for nuclear war in the late 70s and early 80s,” Grohl said. “And then last year, I was taking my daughter to school and it was around the time that the US and North Korea were ramping up tensions with each other and she had seen it on the news.”

He continued: “She just asked me ‘Dad, are we going to war’? It reminded me of how I felt when I was her age and I just thought, ‘What a fucking drag!’ How depressing is it that childhood could be robbed of that beauty and innocence by this dark feeling of dread.”

Grohl, who earlier this May penned an op-ed on live music amid the COVID-19 pandemic, also stated that the band won’t be going back on the road until “we get to a place where everyone’s safe and sound”.

“First and foremost, our main concern is that everyone is safe. Our band wouldn’t just jump out on the road for the sake of having an audience,” Grohl explained. “We’ll just have to adapt and figure out new ways to connect with the audience. Our band is rooted in live performance, more than anything.”

“I love making records and everything that goes along with being in this band. But being on stage is really where we shine. Until that can happen safely, we’re just gonna have to fucking knock it out in the rehearsal room.”

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