Eight songs, written and recorded in eight cities, eight different album covers for their eighth album: Foo Fighters are crazy for eights on their new album “Sonic Highways.”
The rock quintet, led by Dave Grohl, announced details on their new album today (Aug. 11), revealing that the Butch Vig co-produced set will be out by Black Friday: “Sonic Highways” will hit shelves on Nov. 10. With only a few songs on the album, it clocks in at 44-minutes, which would average out to about five-and-a-half minutes per song. (Hey, and 4+4=8!)
The set shares the same name as Grohl's new HBO series, which takes a snapshot of famed recording studios in eight different cities — Austin, Chicago, Los Angeles, Nashville, New Orleans, New York, Seattle and Washington, D.C. The band wrote a new song in each stop, while Grohl and his video team would film the recording process and interviews with supporting characters along the way. “Local legends” from each city stop by the studio to guest on the songs.
Along with digital and CD, “Sonic Highways” (Roswell Records/RCA) will be released on vinyl, with eight different album covers on those LP releases to correspond with each city. Those special pressings will be available as custom orders via the Foos' “Sonic Highways” site.
The band has released the first 14 seconds of material from the album, an unnamed, hard-charging song in the YouTube video below. The tracklist is below that — which song do you think goes with which city?
“Sonic Highways” is the follow-up to the Foo Fighters' last studio set, “Wasting Light,” from 2011.
“Sonic Highways” — the TV series — is “described by Grohl as a love letter to the history of American music” and premieres on the HBO cable network on Oct. 17.
Here is the tracklist for “Sonic Highways”:
1. Something From Nothing
2. The Feast and The Famine
3. Congregation
4. What Did I Do?/God As My Witness
5. Outside
6. In The Clear
7. Subterranean
8. I Am A River
The general-use album cover — which has imaging from all eight cities — is below. Click for larger resolution.
