Dave Grohl called in to SiriusXM‘s Alt Nation and spoke with SiriusXM‘s Jeff Regan about the upcoming FOO FIGHTERS album, “Medicine At Midnight”, and more. You can now watch parts of the chat below.
Regarding FOO FIGHTERS‘ musical approach this time around, Dave said: “It’s our 10th album, and it’s our 25th anniversary. We’re. like, okay, let’s look back at all the stuff that we’ve done before. We’ve made that loud sort of noisy punk rock fast stuff. We’ve made the sleepy acoustic kind of gentle acoustic record stuff. We’ve done the three- or four-minute-long bubblegum rock and roll, pop, single thing before. And it was, like, well, what haven’t we done? And we had never really made a groove-oriented sort of party record.
“It’s hard to put the words ‘dance’ or ‘funk’ or ‘disco’ in the same sentence as the FOO FIGHTERS; it scares the shit out of me,” Dave admitted. “But all of us grew up loving rock and roll records that you could like bounce around to, like THE CARS. Like, oh my God, we love THE CARS. Or David Bowie‘s ‘Let’s Dance’. Or POWER STATION. Or THE [ROLLING] STONES‘ ‘Tattoo You’ — things like that. We’re, like, ‘All right. We’ve never really explored that territory before. Let’s do it.
“We’re lucky in that everybody in the band has diverse influences and everybody loves different kinds of music, but I honestly think we’re capable of doing almost anything,” he said. “So if we put our minds to it, we can kind of chameleon and turn into a death metal band, or we could be like THE CARPENTERS. So we just have to come together and make the decision, like, ‘All right, which way do we wanna go? Which way are we gonna turn the wheel?’ And this time we did it to make this party record.”
On the topic of FOO FIGHTERS‘ new single “Shame Shame”, Grohl said: “That song is not really a party [song]. I mean, it’s got a groove unlike anything we’ve ever done before, and it has a dynamic and a vibe and a tone unlike anything we’ve ever done before, which is why I wanted to release it first. You want to give people some sort of indication, like, ‘Okay, this isn’t exactly like the other nine records. This is moving into another territory.’ It’s not necessarily indicative of all of the other songs, but it does have its place on the record. It serves its purpose. And I love it, because it’s just different than anything we’ve ever done.”
Grohl‘s interview with Regan aired on Sunday, November 8 on SiriusXM‘s Alt Nation and will rebroadcast on Monday, November 9 at 12:00 p.m., 5:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. ET as well as on Tuesday, November 10 at 8:00 a.m., 2:00 p.m., 7:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. ET.
“Medicine At Midnight” is due out February 5, 2021 on Roswell Records/RCA Records. The LP is available for pre-order, including a limited-edition purple swirl vinyl version, available exclusively at this location.
Produced by Greg Kurstin and FOO FIGHTERS, engineered by Darrell Thorp and mixed by Mark “Spike” Stent, “Medicine At Midnight” contains nine songs with a running time of 37 minutes.
Seven of FOO FIGHTERS‘ albums have landed in the Billboard top 10, including 2014’s “Sonic Highways”, which debuted and peaked at No. 2.
Photo credit: Danny Clinch
