Notes: In Your Honor

Foo Fighters

Normally I don't give in to impulse buying, but I spotted this dual-disc album at the Border's checkout while I was getting my Lewis Black fix last week. Whenever a band releases a two-disc album for the price of a regular it signals one of two things: 1) We're so big now we can do these huge experimental projects and be kind to our fans, or 2) We're on the long slow spiral to obscurity and need a hit something bad. In Your Honor splits the difference between these two options.

First off, the title track sucks. I mean seriously, it's dreary, pointless, and thankfully short. There's lots of droning and whining and feedback, which I guess fits in with Dave Grohl's new "I need a shave and a lozenge" neo grunge look. They may be shooting for some sort of Dark Side of the Moon or Quadrophenia style storytelling setup with the first track, but I'm just not hearing it materialize.

Fortunately, whatever they were going for in terms of continuity evaporates and they drop into some good old Foo Fighters high speed rock and roll, starting with No Way Back and their current hit single Best of You, both of which sound great while hitting the accelerator on I-95. The rest of the first disc is nothing but hard core driving rock reminiscent of the best elements of There is Nothing Left to Lose and The Colour and Shape. DOA and The Deepest Blues are Black are particularly good if you enjoy high-energy sound juxtaposed against dark, bitter, mournful lyrics (which I do).

They do something a little strange with the arrangement of the two discs; the first is, as I said, all hard rock. The second is all ballads, epics, and torch songs. The shift in Grohl's voice from grunge pop scream to resonant crooner is absolute. The guitar work on Over and Out and On the Mend are particularly good. However, I'll pass on Virginia Moon's bossanova lounge duet.

The hard/soft split of the album makes the second disc a bit of a sleeper and breaks up what could have been an excellent narrative flow for the album. It's as if you arranged the books of Lord of the Rings alphabetically. You can hear some tracks on the second disc that would resonate beautifully with some of the hard rock tracks if they were mixed together in sequence. In Your Honor as a whole could definitely benefit from the guiding hand of a fan's personal playlist, mixing the two discs into a seamless, well-paced storyline.

Which brings us to the chief complaint, the grand offense: the album has an aggressive copy protection scheme (the Suncomm stuff, I think). There are ways to bypass this, of course, but not being able to PLAY the thing on a computer unless you install their piece of crap media manager software is insulting. This is the first CD I've ever bought that I would rather rip whole cloth onto a drive and never play the disc itself again, purely because of the bullshit copy protect. What's so frustrating is that anyone serious about ripping and burning copies illegally will have absolutely no problem with the disc's defenses, but average users will be frustrated that they can't play music that they paid for in the method of their choice. Why the hell wouldn't you download tracks if this is the crap they put you through for doing the right thing?

Anyway, music industry rant aside, this is a pretty good album with twenty full tracks and a lot of variety.