Concert Review: Foo Fighters, Western Springs (+photos)

NZ Herald

13 Dec, 2011 11:00 AM3 mins to read

Dave Grohl of the Foo Fighters rocks Western Springs Stadium last night. Photo / Richard Robinson

* Send us your Foo Fighters photos from last night's show here.

Out runs Dave Grohl, baby-blue guitar in hand, that scruffy full-bodied mop of hair flailing behind him and the rest of the Foo Fighters in tow as they launch straight into All My Life.

And there is little let-up for the next two and three-quarter hours - that is except for Grohl's many chats with the crowd and a few lingering moments, such as the ambient interlude during Monkey Wrench that makes some diehards restless.

They rip through The Pretender (during which Grohl does an Angus Young down the runway stage), Learn To Fly, and a clutch of songs off their new - and possibly best - album Wasting Light, including a blazing White Limo and These Days ("My favourite song I ever wrote in my life," proclaims Grohl).

While it's taken 17 or so years, the Foo Fighters are now a stadium-sized rock band and the near 45,000 people at Western Springs are testament to it. Not many bands have the pulling power to play the Springs these days.

But the Foos have built up over time, and And songs like Monkey Wrench, Times Like These, and My Hero were always destined to be stadium-filling anthems.

This is the band's second show in New Zealand this year, after the Christchurch benefit concert at the Auckland Town Hall in March.

Then, 2500 fans were among the first to hear Wasting Light as they ripped through it in its entirety with an extended greatest hits set to end.

Tonight it's the best of both worlds again, with new songs, all the hits and many fan favourites, including the sprawling psychedelic heaviness of Stacked Actors.

Earlier, unhinged local duo Cairo Knife Fight were dwarfed by the giant stage but unleashed a swirling sonic assault that filled the stadium.

And with it came the rain, but as Grohl's old mate once said, "Oh well, whatever, never mind." And besides, it stopped for the Foos.

Canadian band F***** Up delivered a rowdy but melodic slab of punk and hardcore with caustic-voiced singer Pink Eyes, who revealed his ample belly early on and spent most of the set set singing from in the crowd as he hugged his new Kiwi friends.

Tenacious D - the duo of actor and comedian Jack Black and guitarist Kyle Gass (who joined the Foo Fighters for the encore) - were the comedy show before the main event.

And as Black joked, if Ten D are the thunder, the Foos were the lightning.