Review Summary: Have you found your way around the down and out?
The Colour and the Shape is good. It's really good. It's the album that birthed "Everlong", after all - it's almost too easy to call it one of the greats. But it's also easy to understate just how vital and definitive this album was for the Foo Fighters. For one thing, this was the first proper album by the Foo Fighters as we've come to know them - before
The Colour and the Shape, the original "Foo Fighters" was just a NIN-style moniker used by Grohl to hide his identity on the self-titled, (predominantly) one-man-album
Foo Fighters, an intimate, grungey debut mostly used as an emotional outlet for Grohl, depressed and aimless after Kurt Cobain's suicide. It's a good debut, but a relatively modest one - you can feel the lingering shadow of Cobain and Nirvana as a whole hanging over the record, which - while not necessarily a bad thing, and understandable given the circumstances - was holding Grohl back as a musician. He needed to move on if he wanted to keep shooting his shot.
And move on, he did - Grohl's roughly described
The Colour and the Shape as therapeutic, with the tracklisting (reportedly) designed to resemble a "therapy session," with lyrics about breakups and homesickness to boot. And you can
feel that therapeutic catharsis flowing through each and every one of the tracks. It felt like both a magnificent return to form and a brand new step in the right direction, and this sense of renewed energy certainly aided in the album's success -
The Colour and the Shape hit the ground hard, with "Everlong" and "My Hero" still being played on radio stations to this very day. The songs of
The Colour and the Shape aren't good just because they were written well - they're good because Grohl rekindled the
passion to write some killer songs again.
The Colour and the Shape is defined by duality, a duality you can easily pinpoint in the first five minutes alone. The short opener "Doll" is a quiet, pensive ballad that lays the foundation for the 'softer' side of the album... before launching right into "Monkey Wrench", whose quick-hitting, punkish theatrics waste no time in worming their way into your ears with strong chord movements and a fun, anthemic guitar hook. The record dances between its lighter and edgier sides with free-flowing abandon, happily flittering between tender ballads and hard-hitting rockers. "Walking After You" is a hazy, drifting,
In Your Honor-style acoustic ballad whose soulful subtlety and unusual chord voicings lend a misty elegance to the otherwise-simple song, and the uncanny, quirky "My Poor Brain" rides on a wave of demented pitch harmonics and scorching guitars. "See You" is an out-of-the-blue dip into easy-on-the-ears rockabilly whose psychedelic guitars and rat-a-tat-tat drum beat can't help but put a smile on your face, and that's quickly followed up by "Enough Space", bass-heavy dark rock fueled by some of Grohl's trademark guttural screams and chromaticism so thick it threatens to change the key of the song at any given moment.
Without a doubt, the best songs on the album are the tracks that combine these two 'sides' of
The Colour and the Shape into a pleasant synthesis. "Up In Arms" starts off as a crooning slow dance of a track led by subdued guitars and a calm, rich bassline before leaping into a fast-paced explosion of pop punk theatrics, and there's a tasty dichotomy between the gentle, melodic arpeggios and crushing rhythm guitars in "Hey, Johnny Park!" that lends the song a lot of dynamic energy. The real precious stones of the album are tucked away at the very end, however. "Everlong" is an all-time classic, and for good reason: the duality between its' bittersweet, faint verses and its' sonorous, anthemic chorus perfectly defines not only the energy of the post-grunge era as a whole, but defines the dichotomous sound of
The Colour And The Shape to an absolute T. Album closer "New Way Home" is a Southern Rock-inspired piece framed by melodic arrangements and a toned-down performance by Grohl before abruptly shifting gears to a palm-muted, whispered midsection, a flawless passage that slowly and gracefully rises in intensity, moving from a speck in the background of your headphones into an explosive, speaker-burning finale. And the crown jewel of the album, "February Stars", is an achingly pretty, teary-eyed power ballad that shows off the strengths of each and every bandmate. Rich, winding guitar arpeggios, thick basslines, a tom-heavy drum beat, and sweet, harmony-stacked vocals from Grohl that seamlessly shift from whispery and melancholic to roaring and anthemic as the song draws to a close.
It's genuinely hard to find issue with
The Colour and the Shape - it knows exactly what it wants, marked by a strangely distinctive "melodic grunge" style of music. Filler is minimal, although there is filler from time to time - the otherwise-pleasant "Wind Up" and "See You" could have been taken off the album entirely without incident, but they're both short enough that it hardly makes a difference. Outside of a few moments like "February Stars" and the impressive counter-melodies featured in "Walking After You", the album doesn't do anything very musically extraordinary - solos are uncommon to say the least - but the album's striking simplicity gives its hooks and wistful lyrics room to breathe and stick in the listener's head. Its' few-and-far-between issues aren't enough to keep me from calling it a masterpiece - the Foo Fighters could hardly have gotten off to a better
proper start, and it's honestly because of an album as quality as this that they even got started at all. Like I said: therapeutic, probably more so for Grohl than anyone else.
The Colour and the Shape gave us a Dave Grohl who was not only ready to move on from the passing of his good friend, but a man who was ready to strike out on his own and carry the torch as best he could.
