We already knew that Foo Fighters’ eight studio album and accompanying TV series was ambitious, but an epic new trailer for the HBO documentary series has hammered home just how grand in scope the band’s Sonic Highways project really is.
Documenting the making of Foo Fighters’ new album across studios in eight different US cities – Chicago, Austin, Nashville, Los Angeles, Seattle, New Orleans, Washington DC, and New York – the TV series also traces the history of American music, “from the origins of blues to the birth of hip hop and punk,” as Dave Grohl narrates in the new trailer, as seen below.
“This isn’t just the making of our most ambitious album – this is a love letter to the history of American music.”
As such, the Sonic Highways series looks like Sound City on crack, with an all-star cast of interviewees to match. The diverse array of A-list musicians featured includes Slash, Willie Nelson, Pharrell, The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach, LL Cool J, Dolly Parton, ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, Ian McKaye, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, Macklemore, record mogul Clive Davis, producers Steve Albini and Rick Rubin. Heck, even freaking President Barack Obama!
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“American music: it’s about people rejecting what is already there to create something entirely new,” Obama tells Grohl against a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ of more music big-names like Josh Homme, Tommy Lee, Cody ChestnuTT, Bonnie Raitt, Chuck D, Joan Jett, and more.
The clip also works in various in-studio footage of Foo Fighters recording their new album; joined in the studio by a local musician of note in each city/episode: Texan guitar prodigy Gary Clark Jr., Cheap Trick’s Rick Neilsen in Chicago, and Eagles’ Joe Walsh in LA, all said to feature on Sonic Highways. The trailer culminates in an extended taste of new Foo Fighters cut, ‘Something From Nothing’.
The debut episode of Sonic Highways will air in the US on Friday 17th October at 11pm ET/PT, with the seven subsequent episodes airing each subsequent week (and you can bet it’s going to reach the peak piracy levels of fellow HBO blockbuster, Game Of Thrones, in no time).
Meanwhile, in a cunning bit of marketing, Sonic Highways – the album – will drop worldwide after the completion of the series (on 10th November via Roswell Records). The follow-up to 2011′s Wasting Light is available for pre-order in a variety of CD and 180 gram vinyl editions, as well as a ‘Mega Bundle’, over at the official Foo Fighters website. View the artwork and tracklisting (including a 7-minute closer) below.
Grohl has previously teased to expect the unexpected from the new record, along with the band’s familiar sonic hallmarks. “You’ll recognize Foo Fighters in this record but you’ll also be surprised by us. We’re doing things that we’ve never done before,” Grohl explains.
“The music is a progression or an evolution for sure, but it’s a Foo Fighters record … Honestly, there are sections of songs that will really take you by surprise. And then there are choruses that you’ll just recognize as Foo Fighters within the first three seconds.”
Sonic Highways Tracklisting:
01. ‘Something From Nothing’ (4:49)
02. ‘The Feast and the Famine’ (3:50)
03. ‘Congregation’ (5:12)
04. ‘What Did I Do?/God As My Witness’ (5:44)
05. ‘Outside’ (5:15)
06. ‘In the Clear’ (4:04)
07. ‘Subterranean’ (6:08)
08. ‘I Am a River’ (7:09)
