Foo Fighters to release new album, ‘Sonic Highways,’ on Nov. 10
Dave Grohl is getting back into the record business.
After spending much of last year promoting his documentary “Sound City,” in which the Foo Fighters frontman examined the importance of a seemingly modest Van Nuys recording studio, Grohl announced Monday that his Los Angeles-based band will release a new album on Nov. 10.
Titled “Sonic Highways,” the record was produced by the group with Butch Vig, who also oversaw the Foo Fighters’ previous disc, 2011’s Grammy-winning “Wasting Light.”
Yet Grohl’s return to music doesn’t mean he’s set aside his filmmaking aspirations.
“Sonic Highways” will arrive just after the Oct. 17 premiere of a new HBO series documenting the Foo Fighters’ visits to eight American cities with important musical traditions: Austin, Texas; Chicago; Los Angeles; Nashville; New Orleans; New York; Seattle and Washington, D.C.
Each of the album’s eight tracks was written and recorded in a different town -- with various well known residents sitting in -- in an attempt to reflect “the local musical currents” of each city, according to a statement.
“Part of the focus of this project was the regional relevance of all of these places,” Grohl said last month during a presentation at the Television Critics Assn. press tour in Beverly Hills. “In today’s world of interconnectivity, there’s kind of no isolation. And a lot of the reasons why these specific types of music happened in these places was because of the isolation.”
The singer went on to point out that Seattle, home of the grunge scene that produced Grohl’s old band Nirvana, “sort of lived in its own little bio-dome and created this beautiful music scene, a community of musicians that supported each other.”
In Monday’s statement Grohl said that “Sonic Highways” -- a brief clip from which you can hear on the band’s website -- “is instantly recognizable as a Foo Fighters record, but there’s something deeper and more musical to it. I think that these cities and these people influenced us to stretch out and explore new territory, without losing our sound.”
Twitter: @mikaelwood
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