Foo Fighters’ sixth studio album, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace, was first released eight years ago today, on 25th September 2007.
The record marked the Foo’s experimentation with blending heavy rock and acoustic rock through shifting dynamics, which they had already begun on their previous record, In Your Honor. They produced this outcome on the previous record by having one side electric and the other acoustic.
Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace emerged from a variety of demos that the band had produced over the years; wanting to be able to blend the two sounds together rather than create another record that was half rock and half acoustic.
The cover art was produced by Invisible Creature, and features a juxtaposition of a torpedo and a guitar amplifier tube to reflect the album’s tone of life and mortality.
This resulted in Foo Fighters creating an extremely advantageous record. They decided to work with producer Gil Norton again, who had worked with them previously on their second album, The Colour and the Shape. Norton was able to push the band to refine their composition and make the record that they wanted to create. This lead to an extreme amount of preparation, including four weeks worth of rehearsal. Recording began at the band’s own studio – Studio 606 – and lasted from March until June of 2007.
The record also marked Foo Fighters’ first instrumental track; ‘The Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners’. The song was written by Dave Grohl after he met with one of the miners involved in the Beaconsfield mine collapse in Tasmania, Australia. During the rescue mission, one of the miners requested an iPod with Foo Fighters’ fifth album, In Your Honor, on to it. After Grohl sent a fax to meet with the miners for a beer and invite them to a Foo Fighters’ show, he eventually met with the one who requested the iPod. He subsequently wrote and dedicated that track to the miners.
Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace spawned two of Foo Fighters’ major hits; ‘The Pretender’ and ‘Long Road to Ruin’. Other singles from the record include ‘Let it Die’ and ‘Cheer Up Boys (Your Make Up Is Running)’. As of 14th April 2011, Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace has sold 897, 000 copies and has been certified Gold by the RIAA.
Watch the video for the most popular single on the album, ‘The Pretender’, below.
