The next album from the Foo Fighters is already written and fans can expect to hear it in 2014.
After telling Hitfix at South X Southwest in March that the new set was in the “very earliest stages,” head Foo Dave Grohl told London radio station XM a few days ago that progress has definitely been made: “We have been in our studio writing and in the past few weeks we’ve written an album, and we are going to make this album in a way that no one’s ever done before and we’re pretty excited about it,” he’s quoted as saying. “It’s a little ways off – it’s not ready to happen right now, but I think next year is going to be a really big year for the Foo Fighters without question.”
It”s hard to imagine that there”s a new way to make an album: the Foos have recorded live, analog, digital, in a garage, in a home studio, in a professional studio… how many other options are there?
In case you needed further confirmation, Foo guitarist Chris Shiflett told Rolling Stone over the weekend, before a Chris Shiflett and the Dead Peasants show in San Luis Obispo, Calif., the band is already playing together again. “”We actually just started making a new Foo Fighters record within the last few weeks,” he said. “We”ve started rehearsing…we”re going to start recording the new Foo Fighters record at the beginning of next year.”
All this news comes a year after Grohl said the Foo Fighters wouldn”t play again for a “long time,” but maybe he means there will be no tour behind the next album or maybe, thankfully, “long time” means something different to Grohl than to the rest of us. He completely dodges the rumor of some small Foo Fighter gigs in the U.K. next year in the XM interview.
Regardless, even Shiflett is surprised the band is coming back together so soon. “I knew we weren”t done,” he says about Grohl”s “long time” comments, “but I just thought it”d be a little longer. But whatever -it”s good. It”s good getting back to work.” The album will be the group’s first since 2011’s “Wasting Light.”
In the XM interview, Grohl also talks about the release of 20th anniversary, 70-track deluxe re-release of Nirvana”s “In Utero,” out Sept. 24. “It”s hard to believe that much time has gone by,” he says, admitting that so much of the past two decades feels like a “blur.” He’s most excited for fans to hear some improv tunes in Brazil. “Whenever I hear that, it really reminds me what it was like to be in Nirvana,” he says. “I don’t like listening to In ‘Utero,'” he says with a bittersweet laugh. “It’s too real. We hit record and we managed to honestly capture the emotional state of the band and it was a weird time for us. It was dark. It was kind of a little too real. It’s the most honest recording I’ve ever made in my entire life.” He calls it “heartbreaking” that they aren’t making music anymore, following Cobain’s 1994 death.
He also jokes about taking his kids to Nirvana”s exhibit at Seattle”s Experience Music Project. “They really couldn”t care,” he laughed.