Foo Fighters has announced its first album since the sudden death of drummer Taylor Hawkins in March 2022. “But Here We Are” is set to arrive on June 2, with its lead single, “Rescued,” available now.
“A brutally honest and emotionally raw response to everything Foo Fighters endured over the last year, ‘But Here We Are’ is a testament to the healing powers of music, friendship and family,” according to a press release. “Courageous, damaged and unflinchingly authentic, ‘But Here We Are’ opens with newly released lead single ‘Rescued,’ the first of 10 songs that run the emotional gamut from rage and sorrow to serenity and acceptance, and myriad points in between.”
The drummer on the new song is not identified and does not sound like Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl, who has concentrated on singing and rhythm guitar since he formed the band in 1995 but occasionally gets behind the kit. In fact, it sounds like Josh Freese, who has been widely tipped as the band’s next drummer, although no announcement has been made and reps for the group did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday morning. The band has scheduled months of tour dates, beginning in New Hampshire on May 24, and looks likely to spend most of the rest of the year on the road.
Hawkins died on March 25, 2022 at the age of 50 before the band was set to perform at a festival in Bogota, Colombia. Hawkins had been the drummer for Foo Fighters since 1997, joining the band after touring with Alanis Morissette. He and Grohl were especially close, with Grohl describing Hawkins in his memoir “The Storyteller” as “my brother from another mother, my best friend, a man for whom I would take a bullet.” The band put on two tribute concerts for Hawkins in September, with guests including Paul McCartney, Joan Jett, Travis Barker, Chrissie Hynde, Josh Homme, Miley Cyrus, Pink, Dave Chappelle and members of Queen, AC/DC, Metallica and Rush.
Produced by Foo Fighters and the band’s longtime collaborator Greg Kurstin, the album is “in nearly equal measure the 11th Foo Fighters album and the first chapter of the band’s new life,” the press release states. “Sonically channelling the naiveté of Foo Fighters’ 1995 debut, informed by decades of maturity and depth, ‘But Here We Are’ is the sound of brothers finding refuge in the music that brought them together in the first place 28 years ago, a process that was as therapeutic as it was about a continuation of life.”
See the album’s full tracklist below:
- “Rescued”
- “Under You”
- “Hearing Voices”
- “But Here We Are”
- “The Glass”
- “Nothing at All”
- “Show Me How”
- “Beyond Me”
- “The Teacher”
- “Rest”
