Concrete and Gold

performing with a broken leg on the Sonic Highways World Tour. The band's earliest ideas for their ninth studio album included creating a studio on the Hollywood Bowl amphitheater in California and recording the album live in front of a crowd of 20,000 people. However, frontman Dave Grohl lost interest in the idea upon learning that it had already recently been done by PJ Harvey with her 2015 recording sessions for her album The Hope Six Demolition Project. Through the use of a self-designed "throne", a large chair that could sit him comfortably on stage, Grohl and the band completed the tour and recorded the Saint Cecilia EP. After the tour, in early 2016, the band announced they would enter an indefinite hiatus. While no reasons were given at the time, in 2017, Grohl told Rolling Stone that he was still struggling from the injury, still unable to walk and enduring daily, lengthy physical therapy sessions. He secluded himself from the band, and set a goal for himself to stay away from music for an entire year while he focused on recuperating. However, at six months to the day, he cancelled the plan when he began writing the lyrics to the track "Run". ==Writing and recording==

Initial writing sessions only involved Grohl, who continued being in seclusion from the band, although he initially struggled, feeling "out of practice" and "creatively atrophied" due to his longer than usual break from music. Grohl had been listening to the work of Kurstin's indie pop band, The Bird and the Bee since 2014 and was very impressed with his work, calling it "so much more sophisticated than anything [he'd] ever heard." Grohl reached out to Kurstin, and learned that he had taken a hiatus from The Bird and the Bee to focus on his work as a music producer, producing songs including Halsey's "Strangers", Sia's "The Greatest" and "Cheap Thrills", and Adele's "Hello". Grohl also announced that "probably the biggest pop star in the world" would provide backing vocals on a track as well, though he refused to name who, leading to much speculation due to the number of pop stars Kurstin had previously worked with prior to the Foo Fighters. Grohl later clarified that it was not Adele or Taylor Swift, and that the person has "been around a long time", and eventually revealed it to be Justin Timberlake. Further collaborations include vocals by Inara George on the track "Dirty Water", saxophone by David Koz on the track "La Dee Da", and vocals by Alison Mosshart of The Kills on "La Dee Da" and "The Sky Is a Neighborhood". Concrete and Gold also marks Rami Jaffee's first credit as an official band member, having been a session and touring keyboardist for the band since 2005. While not a formal collaborator on the album, Grohl also would travel to visit past collaborator Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age during the recording sessions as well, who was working in the nearby United Recording music studio. The two often played in-progress material for each other, as each was working on a new approach of recording a rock album with a pop music producer, Homme doing the same thing with music producer Mark Ronson on the album Villains. ==Composition and themes==

The band describe the album's sound as where "hard rock extremes and pop sensibilities collide", comparing it conceptually to being "Motorhead's version of Sgt. Pepper" or "Slayer making Pet Sounds". Explaining further, the album's sound was described as combining heavy guitar riffs with "lush harmonic complexities". Hawkins added that in contrast to their mindset in the previous albums going to "let's make a good rock n' roll record", Concrete and Gold was "the weird record." Grohl described the title track, which features the vocals of Shawn Stockman from Boyz II Men, as sounding like "Black Sabbath and Pink Floyd" and explaining that they "built a choir" out of Stockman's vocal takes, overdubbing them so it sounds "like 40 vocals stacked". progressive rock or post-grunge. was cited as an influence on Concrete and Golds lyrics. Lyrically, the album is based around Grohl's thoughts about the future of the United States – "politically, personally, as a father, an American and a musician". While the lyrics were written to vent Grohl's political frustrations, the album lyrics themselves are not overtly-political. Grohl also stated an overall theme of the album was “hope and desperation”. ==Release and promotion==

The album was released on September 15, 2017. Two singles were released prior to the album's release, "Run", which topped the US Billboard Mainstream Rock Songs chart in July 2017, and "The Sky Is a Neighborhood", which is at number 13 on the chart. A third song, "The Line", was also released a week prior to the album, and tracks such as "La Dee Da" had been debuted at live shows earlier in 2017. The band commenced a headlining North American tour in support of the album starting in October 2017. Prior to the tour, the band also plans on throwing their own festival – "Cal Jam 17" – with performances from themselves, Queens of the Stone Age, Cage the Elephant, and a number of other bands, as a large-scale version of an album-release party. On October 20, 2017, the band released a previously unreleased b-side song from the album sessions, "Soldier", for the Planned Parenthood benefit compilation album 7-Inches for Planned Parenthood. The third single from the album, "The Line" was released on May 1, 2018. ==Reception==

Critical response Concrete and Gold received generally positive reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album has an average score of 72 out of 100, which indicates "generally favorable reviews" based on 29 reviews. Newsday critic Glenn Gamboa praised Kurstin's production on the album, and the band as well for successfully expressing grander and more artistic statements than past albums. Jon Pareles of The New York Times praised the band's ability to make something new out of all of their influences, concluding that "Mr. Grohl and Foo Fighters wear their influences so openly—Pink Floyd in Concrete and Gold, Led Zeppelin in Make It Right, the Beatles all over the album—that they still come across as earnest, proficient journeymen, disciples rather than trailblazers. But in 2017, there aren’t even many disciples left, while Foo Fighters keep honing their skills." In a more reserved review for The Guardian, Alexis Petridis wrote, "Concrete and Gold sees the Foo Fighters gently and enjoyably nudge at the boundaries of what they do, rather than crashing through them to new territory. It's an album that won't frighten the horses, but provides enough fresh interest to keep the band ticking over: for the Foo Fighters, you suspect, that means mission accomplished." Commercial performance The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 all-format album chart with 127,000 album-equivalent units, of which 120,000 were digital and physical album sales. It is Foo Fighters' second US number-one album, after Wasting Light. and their seventh in Australia's ARIA Charts, where it soon got certified gold for 35,000 units. Accolades ==Track listing==

Credits taken from album's liner notes. Foo Fighters • Dave Grohl – lead vocal (tracks 1–8, 10, 11), guitar (1–7, 9–11), acoustic guitar (8), percussion (2, 8) • Taylor Hawkins – drums (tracks 1–8, 10, 11), background vocals (1, 3, 4, 7, 10), percussion (2, 6, 8), lead vocal (9) • Nate Mendel – bass (all tracks), percussion (2, 8) • Chris Shiflett – guitar (all tracks), percussion (2, 8) • Pat Smear – guitar (all tracks), percussion (2, 8) • Rami Jaffee – piano (tracks 1, 5, 10), synth (1, 6, 9), Mellotron (2, 7, 10, 11), Casio SK-1 (2), organ (2, 9), percussion (2, 8), Farfisa organ (3, 7), ARP String Ensemble (3), clavinet and Reface (5), Wurlitzer (6, 9), vibraphone (7), harmonium and pump organ (8), B3 organ (10), Moog (11) Guest musicians • Greg Kurstin – piano (tracks 2, 7), synth (6, 9), vibraphone (7, 10), ARP String Ensemble (7), bass synth (10) • Taylor Greenwood – background vocals (track 1) • Justin Timberlake – background vocals (track 3) • Alison Mosshart – background vocals (tracks 4, 5) • Kinga Bacik – cello (track 4) • Thomas Lea – viola (track 4) • Ginny Luke – violin (track 4) • Dave Koz – saxophone (track 5) • Inara George – background vocals (track 6) • Jessy Greene – violin (tracks 8, 10), cello (11) • Greg Sierpowski – Optigan (track 8) • Paul McCartney – drums (track 9) • Shawn Stockman – background vocals (track 11) Production • Greg Kurstin – production • Foo Fighters – production • Darrell Thorp – mixing, engineering, mastering • Alex Pasco – engineering • Julian Burg – engineering • Samon Rajabnik – engineering • Brendan Dekora – engineering • Chaz Sexton – assistant engineer • David Ives – mastering ==Charts==

Weekly charts Year-end charts ==Certifications==