You’ve probably seen / read / heard a chunk about this album already and with due cause. As it’s an album that I’ve spun close to daily since release – which is quite a rarity – I thought I’d add my take on the new Foo Fighters album But Here We Are.

This is a bittersweet album in many ways fuelled, as it is, by the passing of Taylor Hawkins and the non-announced passing of Dave Grohl’s mother a few months later. While grief and how we process it is a personal thing, given that the first Foo Fighters album – performed almost entirely by Grohl himself – was recorded as a way to recover from Kurt Cobain’s suicide it’s no surprise that But Here We Are is the sound of Dave Grohl processing two major life changes in one. The real surprise, though, is not just that it’s good but that it’s up there with the finest of their career.

Across their preceding career spanning over twenty five years, the Foo Fighters had dropped ten studio albums. Two of those – The Colour and The Shape and Wasting Light are close to unimpeachable. Their last few studio efforts had veered close to ‘commitment’ level releases to provide reason to venture out on another stadium-filling tour across the globe: Sonic Highways was completely ignored on their recent Essential… and while Concrete and Gold felt like a strong return, it didn’t hold up as well longer term and their 2021 ‘dance’ inspired album Medicine At Midnight felt like a slight deviation on ticking along. But Here We Are, though, manages to combine the musical diversity of The Colour and The Shape and, particularly, There Is Nothing Left To Lose with the force and tightness of Wasting Light musically and pair that with Grohl’s most direct and affectingly raw lyrics to date.

Hawkins’ passing left a vacant drum stool in the Foo Fighters. When they announced that they would be continuing as a band there was a ridiculous amount of speculation who’d be filling it. The answer, essentially, is nobody. While Josh Freese sits behind the kit on tour, this is the first album since The Colour and the Shape that features Dave Grohl’s drumming power throughout and on album standout, the ten minute belter ‘The Teacher’ (a nod Grohl’s mother) he fucking gallops along on the beat while the song moves through charged lyrics “you showed me how to breathe, never showed me how to say goodbye… try and make good with the time that’s left, counting every minute living breath by breath” before building to a wall of noise amidst a cathartic, screamed “Goodbye!” It gets to be real goose-bump stuff for me.

Yes, from opener ‘Rescued’ and its “It came in a flash, It came out of nowhere” to closer ‘Rest’ and “rest, you will be safe now” everything in between deals with the passing of those dear to us but Dave Grohl of 2023 paints in Wembley Stadium sized colours and turns it into a mass healing ritual across these ten tracks. Judging by the few shows they have under their belt since the album’s release this transfers live too as fans find solace in the process too. In anyone else’s hands a whole album dealing with this matter would be a massive downer, man, but the Foos have created an album that’s more interesting and powerful musically than anything they’ve done in the last two decades (less straight-ahead than Wasting Light).

That’s not to say they don’t still bring the power when they want to: ‘Nothing At All’ is ferocious, opener ‘Rescued’ is show-opening ready and ‘The Teacher’ thumps hard.

This is, in many ways, an album nobody wanted the Foo Fighters to have made but I’m bloody glad they did. Not only is it a fitting and powerful coming to terms with loss but it shows that they have a lot more in the tank than I thought they had and that, eleven albums in, they’re still willing to push beyond comfort zones. Essential for Foo Fighters fans, definitely worthy of investigation by the curious and likely to count as one of their best for a long time to come.