 Foo Fighters, Weezer keep alt-rock alive
It's easy to read the fate of Foo Fighters and Weezer as a parable for alternative rock itself. In that mid-Nineties moment when the genre seemed both profitable and compelling, both bands exploded; a decade later, however, their lackluster new albums sound like two more nails in alt-rock's dusty coffin.
At the same time, each act is still selling records at a respectable clip -- Weezer's "Make Believe" and Foo Fighters' "In Your Honor" have shipped more than half a million copies apiece since their spring release dates -- and their joint tour drew a large and notably youthful crowd Monday night to the Allstate Arena in Rosemont.
As it happened, the show made a convincing argument for the continued live prowess of both bands. They may not have much new to say, but onstage they say it well.
Playing first, Weezer overcame both an acoustic environment that was bad even by the big gym's low standards (every drum crack and vocal yelp that hit the far wall splintered into a hundred echoes) and a set list front-loaded with new songs that failed to really ignite.
After a shambling, good-natured cover of his tour mates' early single "Big Me," though, Rivers Cuomo seemed to loosen up. When he worked his best rock-star poses in "A Perfect Situation," the fans responded, buoying him with shouts.
Just that quickly, the geek-rock heroes had gained momentum, and for the balance of the set they never let it sag. Whether it was the enormous, inescapable guitar and vocal hooks of "El Scorcho" and "Say It Ain't So" or Cuomo's neat populist trick of playing a solo version of "Island in the Sun" from a low riser at the rear of the arena's floor, every ploy succeeded.
In contrast, Foo Fighters saw Weezer's shiny pop and countered it with brute force. With the subdued Dave Grohl -- the one who duets with Norah Jones on his new album's all-acoustic second disc and pens wistful, jangling sitcom themes -- apparently locked in the tour bus, the shaggy, black-clad, bloody-throated yowler Dave Grohl was off his leash.
Over the pummeling drums of Taylor Hawkins and Chris Shiflett's acidic second guitar, he cut loose on new songs and old: "In Your Honor" and "All My Life" loomed much larger onstage than they do on the band's latest album, while the familiar hits "My Hero" and "This Is a Call" came out quicker and more muscular than usual.
Only a subdued version of "Up in Arms" showed Grohl's softer side. In dedicating it to a cousin and other family from Evanston, he offered a story about his "first punk show": Naked Raygun at the Cubby Bear "in 1981 or '82."
This gig won't likely inspire such tales 20 years on, but it suggested that a pair of alt-rock dinosaurs still has some fight left. |
