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If Dave Grohl ever settles down and stops second-guessing himself, he mightmake a truly brilliant record. As it stands, he's crafted enough memorablesingles to justify an enviable greatest hits package—even his most calculatedand careerist songwriting efforts (i.e. "My Hero" from The Colourand the Shape) have more depth and contrast than most of the crap cloggingmodern rock radio airwaves these days. Still, no matter how likeable Grohl makeshimself out to be, it seems like he's asking a lot of his fans to supporta protracted identity crisis that has stretched on for the better part of eightyears.
The story behind One by One is more interesting that the record itself:the band spent four fruitless months in the studio before aborting the session,stripping the songs bare and re-recording them in a period of 12 days. As tobe expected, the result suggests a band that's at odds with itself andGrohl's still playing P.T. Barnum by interspersing some catchy-as-hellsongs with a handful of dismal toss-offs. The record has a pair of magnificentbookends: opener "All My Life" borrows a page from Grohl's recentstint with Queens of the Stone Age, and "Come Back"—an epic inevery sense—caps the record off with eight minutes of distortion and feedback.
The explosive rhythm section of drummer Taylor Hawkins and bassist Nate Mendelhelps to ease the sting of inequity elsewhere, but this is Grohl's worldand he hasn't given the rest of the record as much thought or constantcare. A new line-up has accompanied every Foo Fighters record to date, and Grohland whomever he's surrounding himself with at the time always spout thesame rhetoric to the fans: this is the record we meant to make all along. That'sno truer now than it was in 1995, and it's time to stop grading the FooFighters on a curve.