Your Favorite Toy

Dave Grohl seems confused."Do I? Do I? Do I? Do I?" he screeches in the opening seconds of the latest Foo Fighters LP, Your Favorite Toy. More questions, vague and open-ended, crop up with shocking frequency across the album's 10 tracks: "Hey, aren't you who I think you are?" "What is real?" "Am I a part of you?"Perhaps Grohl is experiencing some sort of mid-life crisis, a destabilization of reality. Or perhaps this state of confusion is simply a permanent side-effect caused by decades spent fronting one of the most incessantly clamorous bands in the history of modern rock music. Indeed, after listening to Your Favorite Toy multiple times for the purpose of this review, I too felt dazed, and slightly unmoored from reality.Most music sounds better through headphones. It's easier to get lost in the mix; more fun to pick up on minor details or intricate production choices. Not so with the Foo Fighters, whose signature sound — hard-driving drums, a never-ending tidal wave of distorted power chords, Grohl's burly growls — is about as subtle a construction site.In the '90s, this maximalist approach combined with Grohl's earnest charisma, felt exciting — an exuberant rush of energy to wash away the gloomy hangover from the grunge explosion. But over the past three decades, the band's output has become increasingly bland and grating, like a slightly damaged radio playing in a cramped garage.Midway through my first listen to Your Favorite Toy — the 12th Foo Fighters LP, by the way —  I found myself ripping my headphones off, not unlike that José Mourinho meme. I switched over to external speakers, which sounded a bit better, though I didn't dare turn the volume up past 75 percent.To be fair, the Foos do sound reinvigorated here. They seem to have a newfound pep in their step, thanks in no small part to the presence of Ilan Rubin — a former Nine Inch Nails drummer who replaced former Nine Inch Nails drummer Josh Freese, who was reportedly fired by the band in 2025 (it's confusing).Anyways, Rubin's drumming here is crisp and tightly mechanical, and provides the record with a much-needed a jolt of youthful energy: these songs are faster and heavier than much of the band's recent output, at times harkening back to the more freewheeling sound that defined their early days.Grohl, too, seems particularly keyed up. It's genuinely impressive that the man can sing (or, more often on this record, scream) like this at the age of 57 — a skill he chalks up to whiskey and beer (rock 'n' roll is still alive, amiright?).This newfound alchemy pays occasional dividends. The album's title track is a crunchy, high-energy and (dare I say) dance-y affair — look out, a mid-song guitar solo! — and it probably rips live. It's the closest the band has ever come to sounding like Queens of the Stone Age, a comparison that would be far more interesting if Grohl's band possessed even a degree of the dangerous licentiousness of Josh Homme and co.Elsewhere, the Foos dabble in punk, like on the spiky screamer "Spite Shine." And they even dip their toes in prog-metal on "Asking for a Friend," a track that features a shockingly heavy guitar riff that, if isolated, could pass for Tool (I'm not joking!).These experimental detours offer a refreshing respite from standard Foo fare. The problem is that the band too rarely commits to these new ideas; rarely lets them breathe or expand. On almost every song, they retreat to that clamorous, mid-tempo centre where they're most comfortable. Take "Window," which opens with a saucy little groove, but quickly transitions to a chorus that sounds nearly identical to at least a dozen other Foo Fighters songs.That sense of monotony has plagued the Foo Fighters for much of the 21st century. As a songwriter, Grohl is most effective when he leans into dynamism. Classic Foo songs like "Monkey Wrench," "All My Life" or even "Best of You" worked because Grohl knew how to withhold, and eventually unleash his screams for maximum emotional catharsis.On Your Favorite Toy, it's all loud and all fast all the time. (One notable exception is "If You Only Knew," a relatively straightforward rock song that nonetheless stands out thanks to an excellent hook.) Compounding this problem is the fact that Grohl remains a frustratingly boring lyricist.In recent weeks, he made headlines for making "a rare political statement," astutely noting that his country is "divided" and "there needs to be change." The lyrics of "Amen, Caveman," which I suppose is the most politically-charged song on Your Favorite Toy, are similarly indeterminate and inane: "Generation euthanized / Go run for cover / You're in for a big surprise / A simulation to keep you at bay / A stimulation and it's bombs away."  Clocking in at just over 36 minutes, Your Favorite Toy is the shortest album in the Foo Fighters' sprawling discography, though you wouldn't know that by listening to it.