STACK #196 Feb 2021

FEATURE MUSIC

chagga-dang-chagga-dang-chagga-dang- chagga’ and you start to get upside-down, like, ‘Where’s the f-cking one?’” The other track Shiflett’s pondering on live is another stand-out: single No Son Of Mine . It contains a mad, chronological ascent in its chords, which sounds like Shiflett and Grohl made a pact to create as many weird angles in two bars as possible. “Yeah, that’s a funny little section,” Shiflett smiles. “I don’t remember how it came about, but it’s funny trying to play that one now, ‘cause we f-ck that part up every time. Everyone’s like, ‘Wait, what is it? Seven? Is it eight? How many times do we move up?!’ It also contains some awesomely atmospheric guitar details (“There’s a lot of tape echo, and spooky-slap-twangy sh-t, that I think of as The Clash – combat rock era guitar tone stuff”) and glam-metal style backup vocal ‘wahs’, which Shiflett attests he did not sing in-studio, and will not sing live: “We have some back-up singers that’ll come out with us,” he laughs. It is, of course, due to the utter evaporation of live gigs that the translation from studio to stage has been so jagged. “That’s the strangest part of this whole thing: not to have live shows,” Shiflett says. “Usually [the album’s release and the live shows] would be going on at the same time... but we’ve had to sort of sit on our hands for months and months while the record was just sitting there, ready to go. You have that thing of going out and playing the new songs in front of a crowd, and [the songs] become something else; it becomes kind of looser, and louder. It becomes a different thing.” The guitarist is more than ready for show time to arrive (“I think the vaccine is a good benchmark for me,” he says), but until then you’re just going to have to crank Medicine at Midnight on your home player. Where it sits in the Foos’ canon – its similarity or dissimilarity to one or another of their records – is something Shiflett’s not busting to define. “I think, sonically, this record is a bit different to anything the band’s done in the past,” he says, “but we don’t sit around talking about everything all the time, ‘Today let’s make something different to everything else,’ you know what I mean?” Yes, we do: don’t think on it too hard, just listen.

Dave rented it when he was just going to make some demos. He brought some gear up there, put a little demo studio together, and he liked the way it sounded. So, we popped the real gear up there

Shots from Foo Fighters’ instagram depicting the move-in to the Encino house

watched Poltergeist for the first time since like, the ‘80s. That scene with the tree? I was a little kid when that movie came out. It scared the f-ck out of me!” The band (comprising Shiflett, Grohl, drummer Taylor Hawkins, guitarist Pat Smear, bassist Nate Mendel and keys player Rami Jaffee) began recording in their possible- necropolis-cum-studio in October 2019, and things immediately bent their way into interesting territory. The off-beat disco feel of Love Dies Young is one of a few surprises on the album, with a rhythmic guitar line Shiflett introduced. “That guitar, chugging along, I actually started playing that just as a joke,” he admits. “That galloping, Eye of the Tiger rhythm. But then when you f-ck around with something like that, you’re like – ‘Sh-t, that actually sounds kind of good. Maybe

we should do that for real.’ Then of course, once we recorded it, it’s all the way through the song and I’m like, ‘Man, that’s going to be a b-tch to play live.’ The hardest stuff is when you have to do the same thing for four minutes. You’re standing there going ‘dang-

Medicine at Midnight by Foo Fighters is out Feb 5 (including on JB Hi-Fi exclusive orange vinyl) via Sony.

Foo Fighters (L-R):Taylor Hawkins, Nate Mendel, Dave Grohl, Rami Jaffee, Pat Smear and Chris Shiflett

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