Foo Fighters
[#] The Colour and the Shape (1997)
A shiny, sugary table to the face.
Reviewed July 9, 2025
Like it or not, "Everlong" continues to thrive because it's a setpiece of pop rock passion. The urgency in the song, the skittering drums, the slightly eerie guitars bearing down on the mix. "Come down and waste away with me"—it's exert self-loathing in a catchy framework. The Colour and the Shape is usually considered the Foo's masterwork because it's the last time Dave Grohl regularly felt like he was putting his whole chest into it. Underneath the thick modern (for 1997) sheen is an album of intense dynamic shifts and an insecurity in the future of his band and himself, stakes that'd be lost in the Foo's rise to rock standard-bearers.
More than anything, Colour is a workout for Dave's vocals. The throat-searing bridges on "Monkey Wrench" and "Wind Up", the wails of "Enough Space"'s refrain, even the second-round howls that close out closer "New Way Home" signal that Dave was through being anonymous and was realizing the full range of his powerful voice. Paired with his monster drum performances (notoriously recording over most of a previous drummer's work in the process), The Colour and the Shape stays vital, hungry without ever leaving behind the lovely, sugary ballads in its middle third or the soaring choruses that make this album a regular on US rock radio some 28 years later.
| Essential: | "Wind Up", "See You", "February Stars" |
|---|---|
| Quintessential: | "Everlong" |
| Non-Essential: | "Hey, Johnny Park!" if I had to pick? |
| Rating: |  |