Foo Fighters - T-Mobile Park, Seattle WA 08-18-2024

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CONCERT REVIEW:
Foo Fighters roll a career-spanning hit parade into Seattle
By Owen R. Smith
Dave Grohl and his band Foo Fighters proved why they are one of rock’s most enduring acts with a triumphant, nearly three-hour show at sold-out T-Mobile Park Sunday night.
After openers Alex G and The Pretenders, Foo Fighters took the stage promptly at 8 p.m. and launched right into the urgent, driving “All My Life.” For a lot of bands, the song would have been a defining hit better served as the finale, given that it spent 10 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Alternative chart and won a 2003 Grammy for “best hard rock performance.” For this group, it was just the beginning of a career-spanning hit parade that managed to never veer too far off into fan-service nostalgia.
Maybe it’s easy to keep things feeling fresh when you love rock music and its rich history as much as Grohl seems to. He told the crowd at the beginning of the show that he was going to test their rock knowledge and gleefully wove bits from AC/DC, Metallica, The Beatles and others into songs.
The band rolled into Seattle to finish up its “Everything or Nothing at All” tour, its first set of dates since longtime drummer Taylor Hawkins’ death in 2022, which canceled a scheduled show at T-Mobile Park that year. Though Hawkins’ passing will always be a part of the band’s identity, Grohl and company seemed to have healed a bit and the joy that playing music still provides was evident throughout the night.
While Hawkins was missed, new stick man Josh Freese (The Vandals, A Perfect Circle, Nine Inch Nails) proved throughout the night that he was more than up to the task. The veteran drummer’s muscular, confident timekeeping didn’t so much give the band a new identity as it did help preserve the one that Hawkins helped create.
“Walk,” another Grammy winner, led into a beautifully haunting version of “Times Like These” with thousands singing along with Grohl. While most of the show was a wall of sound - it was rock music, after all - those delicate moments of restraint helped give all that aggression meaning.
That wall of sound did tend to overwhelm and with three guitarists and a keyboard player, it became hard to parse the individual parts at times. Fortunately there were plenty of contemplative moments, like on “These Days,” and Grohl also spent three songs without the band on his acoustic guitar. “Big Me,” which Grohl said was recorded during Nirvana’s last session before Kurt Cobain’s death in 1994, was especially affecting. He dedicated the song to Krist Novoselić, who was in attendance.
“Aurora,” the first song Hawkins recorded with the band and his favorite, served as an emotional high point and would have been a fine spot to end the show. However, Grohl still had a couple more in the chamber, including Grammy-nominated “Best of You.”
So many shows end with a good portion of the crowd leaving before the encore, but it’s a testament to the love and respect that Grohl and his band engender that the ballpark remained almost full right up to the final chords of “Everlong,” which also featured an impressive and unexpected fireworks display.
Foo Fighters might be back sooner than later. Grohl suggested T-Mobile Park would be a fitting location to celebrate the band’s 30th anniversary next year.
Sometimes, like on “La Dee Da,” there was no need for subtlety. Heavy and satisfying, the song from 2017’s “Concrete and Gold” was a reminder that the band’s best work was not limited to its first few albums.
That Foo Fighters have managed to keep producing high-quality albums 29 years into their existence is one reason why their shows never feel like they exist solely as nostalgia exercises. But that doesn’t undercut the power and emotional resonance of songs like “My Hero,” off 1997’s “The Colour and the Shape.” It was another song in which some restrained rearranging allowed Grohl some space to highlight his voice before guitars and drums came in for a thunderous climax.