Dave Grohl is as much of a rock 'n' roll ambassador as he is a rock musician at this point, and his politics stand on a well-meaning, but wobbly platform: whenever someone with an elite level of money, power and influence presents himself as an everydude, cognitive dissonance is inevitable. While the star-studded travelogue Sonic Highways promised "a musical map of America", it could've passed for a longform Hard Rock Café commercial, ignoring basically every genre outside of the blues-rock lineage. The featherweight Sound City: Reel to Reel documentary and soundtrack was similarly amicable, but it happened to conflate rock 'n roll's "human element" with the Neve console, a machine costing somewhere between $78,000 and $1 million.
The same unintended gap in perspective between Grohl's aw-shucks persona and his output defines Saint Cecilia, a free EP dropped right before Thanksgiving. In the virtual liner notes, Grohl gushes over its recording process, telling of good friends digging through old riffs and creating new jams, wasted away in Margaritaville. The results still sound as slickly produced and hedge-betting as any actual Foo Fighters album.
As well they should—when Dave Grohl and his friends want to record over a lost week(end), this means having Austin's St. Cecilia Hotel turned into a recording studio within the matter of hours, while Gary Clark Jr., Jack Black and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band jam in the periphery. There are expensive microphones and professional recording engineers and famous photographers namedropped like high school buddies. If you really want to hear Foo Fighters songs in chrysalis, by all means, find a bootlegged copy of Pocketwatch.
Meanwhile, St. Cecilia's title track arrives already sounding like it's made the rounds on whatever's left of your local rock radio station. It's the most immediately pleasing thing they've done this decade and also the most instantly familiar, with a robust chorus built on a progression of straight-strummed barre chords, stacked harmonies and broad lyrics that express a general sense of yearning, but nothing that puts Grohl's personal life on the spot. In other words, it's not terribly different than "Learn to Fly" or "Times Like These" or "Next Year", proof that Foo Fighters are modern day, power-pop workhorses in their natural state rather than a rawk band.
Whenever that reputation threatens to stick, Grohl always draws on a Northern Virginia upbringing that put him within driving distance of DC's hardcore scene. "Sean" and "Savior Breath" are punk Foo Fighters, or as punk as they can sound in 2015—infinitely more energetic than anything on Sonic Highways, but only incrementally edgier, Wasting Light without Butch Vig's glossy overlay.
Foo Fighters couldn't make a truly sloppy, abrasive or hookless song if they tried, and they're certainly not going to. With every album prepping the inevitable Foo Fighters' Greatest Hits, Vol. 2, Grohl gets closer to actualizing his unstated goal of being this generation's Tom Petty, a real deal, aw-shucks everydude churning out one centrist and likeable rock song after another. Just look at Grohl's personal trajectory: After Kurt Cobain's suicide, he made the painful decision to turn down his hero's offer to play drums on tour with the Heartbreakers (Saturday Night Live had to do) and Foo Fighters have recently added "Breakdown" as a staple in their live sets.
But even if Grohl's vocals are as immediately identifiable as Petty's by now, he is further than ever from having a distinct voice; Foo Fighters remain our most unknowable and emotionally blank rock stars. Grohl's hooks are wide enough to catch any feeling,—"Things are gonna go, no matter what I say/Nothing's set in stone, no matter what I say"; "Who you runnin' from?"; "No one lets everyone in." Foo Fighters are a power-pop band in this sense. But amidst the plodding alt-roots of "Iron Rooster", Grohl's genial recriminations ("Have you ever been young enough to feel what you wanted to feel/ Take back those years for something real") are best pointed back at him; as well as being their most diverse, hooky and unpredictable records, Foo Fighters and The Colour and the Shape were the only ones where you could trace Grohl's lyrics to some kind of source and there was still some question as to what he wanted this band to be.
Even at their exalted status, Foo Fighters are not an institution like U2 or Coldplay; unlike those bands, there's never any debate or even discussion surrounding their next artistic move. If you consider Grohl in a rock 'n' roll CEO role, like Dan Auerbach or Jack White, it only draws attention to how perverse and prickly Auerbach and White seem in comparison. But for as much effort as it takes to love Foo Fighters, it's nearly impossible to dislike them. Read Grohl's letter again and even Beach Slang can seem kinda wishy-washy about rock music, leaving no doubt that making Saint Cecilia was clearly a rejuvenating experience for Foo Fighters. The EP itself is less convincing as evidence.
