Video: Foo Fighters: "The Pretender"
For those people who worry every couple of years whether rock might be dead, Dave Grohl and his fighting band of Foo Fighters are back to ROCK you (with a capital "rock"). "The Pretender", lead single from the Colour-ful and the Shape-ly rockin' rockers' forthcoming sixth album, Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace, has almost as many echoes as that title has commas (thank goodness they went with AP style). As the song goes from ponderous "Stairway" arpeggios to romping Hüsker Dü downstrokes to bluesy bayou hoochie-coo, Grohl screams, "Who are you?" and tears out enough of his insides to sound like this guy.
As the video confirms, it's only rock n roll, dudes. In the ice hockey arena of life, there are earnest-looking, longhaired Foo Fighters, and there are soldiers in riot gear. There's also the inevitable explosion where a big red wall suddenly liquidates itself and spews Kool-Aid over the battling rockers and fascists. Grohl sings more than once about not surrendering, but the video plays like a concession to the post-grunge bombast that, apparently, is the only way mainstream rockers can still expect to sell records. Short of getting tapped for This Is NEXT, of course.