The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

Foo Fighters

[#] The Colour and the Shape (1997)

A shiny, sugary table to the face.

Reviewed July 9, 2025

Like it or not, "Everlong" continues to thrive because it's a setpiece of pop rock passion. The urgency in the song, the skittering drums, the slightly eerie guitars bearing down on the mix. "Come down and waste away with me"—it's exert self-loathing in a catchy framework. The Colour and the Shape is usually considered the Foo's masterwork because it's the last time Dave Grohl regularly felt like he was putting his whole chest into it. Underneath the thick modern (for 1997) sheen is an album of intense dynamic shifts and an insecurity in the future of his band and himself, stakes that'd be lost in the Foo's rise to rock standard-bearers.

More than anything, Colour is a workout for Dave's vocals. The throat-searing bridges on "Monkey Wrench" and "Wind Up", the wails of "Enough Space"'s refrain, even the second-round howls that close out closer "New Way Home" signal that Dave was through being anonymous and was realizing the full range of his powerful voice. Paired with his monster drum performances (notoriously recording over most of a previous drummer's work in the process), The Colour and the Shape stays vital, hungry without ever leaving behind the lovely, sugary ballads in its middle third or the soaring choruses that make this album a regular on US rock radio some 28 years later.

Essential:	"Wind Up", "See You", "February Stars"
Quintessential:	"Everlong"
Non-Essential:	"Hey, Johnny Park!" if I had to pick?
Rating:

[#] Foo Fighters (1995)

Dave Grohl used to be weird, man.

Reviewed October 28, 2018

The tale of so many other top-shelf bands, Foo Fighters was once the domain of a young man regrouping from loss and producing music with an edge, a hook, and a sense of humor. Later on, it became the vaguely acceptable snack food rock that we think of when we think of the Foos, but when it came to their debut, Dave Grohl was just out to have a good time. Too often does 1995's Foo Fighters get framed in terms of Kurt Cobain's death, but that really ignores this record's defining traits: Dave's ability to write a hook fit for a beluga, and his sense of experimentation. And boy, are both are on display here!

Focusing on the former point, the first half of the record stands tall for essentially being a musical gumball machine. Through the violated stomp of "I'll Stick Around", the rejected Nirvana cut "Alone + Easy Target", or the Mentos rock of "Big Me", it stands to reason that, if Dave wasn't a songwriting heavyweight from the start, he certainly knew how to fake it. It's somewhere around "Floaty" that the record might start to lose people, as Dave experiments more with shoegaze and hardcore punk while never losing that poppy edge. Take note of closer "Exhausted", a plaintive plea for rest amid a wall of noise the Foos would never revisit. Foo Fighters goes down easy and sticks with you for a long time.

Essential:	"I'll Stick Around", "X-Static", "Exhausted"
Quintessential:	"For All the Cows"
Non-Essential:	Can't pick one (but maybe "Wattershed")
Rating:

Foo Fighters (as Late!)

[#] Pocketwatch (1990)

Charmingly anonymous, given its source.

Reviewed July 9, 2025

In 1991, right as Dave Grohl was starting to get wrapped up in this whole Nirvana thing, Sebadoh-style, he released this little home-recorded tape of his own songs. I discussed the sordid history of Pocketwatch alongside the restoration I did of it as a teenager, but fated to stay cassette-only, despite Dave's name and multi-instrumentalist chops, it's always been a little hard to come by. Dave never intended these songs to be anything big, and that's why I like it, dammit. In a world of tired Foo albums with grand emotions and mission statements, this is pre-entertainer Dave, unassumingly mixing genres and having a good time doing it.

Aside from playing every instrument on here, Dave has always been really good with the business end of a pop song. It's how he can pull such a sweet chorus out of a sludgy growler like "Petrol C.B." or put an innocently-voiced, wistful song like "Milk" after a dark, creeping instrumental like "Bruce". We all know Dave can write a pop song, but Pocketwatch has a personality to go with it, the rolling metal backing behind the spoken word story of Skeeter Thompson's cock, the murky depths of "Throwing Needles" moments after the solo acoustic reflection on his new bandmates in "Friend of a Friend" ends. A fun run of the spectrum between pop and sludge, and an excellent introduction to the world of home-recorded cassette albums.

Essential:	"Petrol C.B.", "Bruce", "Milk"
Quintessential:	"Winnebago"
Non-Essential:	"Hell's Garden"
Rating:
Further listening:	Download my Pocketwatch restoration from the Internet Archive