Dave Grohl recently talked about being in therapy “six days a week for 70 weeks,” totalling over 430 sessions. The Foo Fighters frontman was referring to the aftermath of his public revelation of infidelity in 2024, a year after the release of the band’s best album in years, But Here We Are. In reckoning with grief following the deaths of longtime drummer Taylor Hawkins and Grohl’s mother, Virginia, that record sounded way more like the product of exhaustive psychoanalysis; at a lean 36 minutes, their new album, Your Favorite Toy, is more attuned to the anger and frustration festering in the waiting room. While its no-frills aggression often works therapeutically, the album earns a greater sense of direction when it tries harder to get to the bottom of it. Then it ends, like a therapist having to cut a session short at the root of an interesting idea.
1. Caught in the Echo
Perhaps the first Foo Fighters LP attempting to recapture the band’s early sound was 2007’s Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace, so it’s funny that a song called ‘Caught in the Echo’ serves as a reminder that Grohl and co. perpetually find themselves recalibrating around their raw, anthemic beginnings. For a song about overcoming a whirlwind of uncertainty, the track goes some way towards untightening its coiled-fist aggression into something resembling freedom. “Consider this an emancipation/ From all of my confusion,” he sings. It’s not totally convincing, but it gets the blood flowing.
2. Of All People
The track’s sneering attitude is so cut-and-dried it sounds like it was cobbled together in a matter of minutes, apparently targeting a drug dealer Grohl knew in the ’90s – it might as well have been an unearthed demo from that era. New drummer Ilan Rubin’s dynamism shines in this very meat-and-potatoes arrangement, which somewhat justifies the song’s inclusion.
3. Window
It only takes a couple of songs for the tempo to slacken down, with Grohl singing “I’m a puddle on the ground” while the band tries to keep his head above water. The cruising instrumental quiets, unfortunately, just in time to highlight some of the album’s clumsiest lyrics, suffocating whatever emotion was starting to simmer. “Man, that looks like fun,” it ends, the irony hot.
4. Your Favorite Toy
Despite an absolute clunker of a bridge, the title track makes the best case for a slight update of the band’s formative sound rather than a pale imitation of it. It’s torn at the very core, from the sincere but amorphous anger in Grohl’s lyrics to the clash between a swaggering, shuffling groove and flattening distortion – and something about that incongruity is playful, like they’re actually having fun with it.
5. If You Only Knew
If ‘If You Only Knew’ is slightly more memorable, it might be because the song drags itself out to drive the message home: “Maybe you’d feel the way I do/ If you only knew.” Though fuelled by some of the same stylistic contrasts, it doesn’t have the force behind the preceding title track to justify them.
6. Spit Shine
The album promptly revs back up on Side B, with a track driven by a “Think fast, nothing lasts” hardcore mentality that’s then sweetened by a more mature chorus. Not only is “The honeymoon is over” one of the most explicit lines Grohl spits out in reference to his domestic drama, it’s repeated twice in the chorus. Just like the drums hardly let up when the infectious part rushes in, Grohl doesn’t temper his unhinged vocals to serve the melody. It works.
7. Unconditional
Grohl dusts off his songcraft for the obligatory “There are better days ahead” tune, a vibe shift so drastic it almost compensates for the lyrics’ vagueness. “I’m sore from sleeping/ Everything hurts/ Can’t say what’s on my mind,” he begins, but it’s that state of fatigue that animates the most candid apology here.
8. Child Actor
Grohl turns the lens further inward on ‘Child Actor’, and you wonder if Your Favorite Toy would be a stronger album if it tried to balance out its anger instead of swerving briefly in the other direction. There’s a sense that the meanness is an effort to pretend like there’s no eyes on him, to counteract the “nice guy” persona attached to Grohl. But this earnest, measured self-reflection will probably mean more to those actually invested in his music.
9. Amen, Caveman
Another strange amalgamation, this time squaring the Foos’ Sonic Highways-era ambition with a hint of their flirtations with disco.
10. Asking for a Friend
The album ends with its most soaring chorus, an existential outpouring so vehement you wonder where it came from. But the mid-tempo closer remembers which album it’s on when it opts for a thrashy breakdown. “Save your promises/ Until we meet again,” it pleads. ‘Asking for a Friend’ is almost certainly not Foo Fighters’ bitter end, but it upholds their promise to rarely stray from their tried-and-true formula.
