Written by It was probably just a funny coincidence that, back in February, Foo Fighters announced a new album called Your Favorite Toy on the exact same day that Pixar released the trailer for another Toy Story movie. But it feels like something that could’ve been drummed up during a Disney/Sony power lunch. After all, what is Dave Grohl if not the Woody Pride of rock: the all-round nice-guy ringleader who’s always trying to stoke our sentimental attachments to analog-era joys in an ever-changing world. And like Woody, he’s keenly aware that our favorite toys inevitably get taken for granted, and he’ll do anything in his power—disco makeovers, documentaries, horror movies, fam jams, Angine de Poitrine endorsements—to avoid getting tossed into the proverbial donation bin.
In recent years, Grohl has been in the news for less cheerful reasons. Your Favorite Toy is the second Foo Fighters album to arrive in the wake of life-altering events: In the case of 2023’s But Here We Are, it was the sudden death of Foos drummer Taylor Hawkins and the passing of Grohl’s mother, Virginia; Your Favorite Toy, meanwhile, follows the bombshell admission that even the most well-adjusted rock star on the planet is not immune to tabloid scandal. Given all that he’s been through of late, the Foo Fighters frontman has effectively become the target audience for the life-coach aphorisms of a Foo Fighters song.
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But in stark contrast to the reflective, unfiltered songwriting that made But Here We Are the most musically expansive and emotionally revelatory Foos album to date, Your Favorite Toy suggests that any open discussion of Grohl’s marital dilemmas is between him and his very busy therapist. Blood on the Tracks, this ain’t: Your Favorite Toy is the sound of someone who’s spent several years in various stages of grief and damage control snapping out of his funk so that he can—to misquote one of his former cover-song subjects—rock the pain away. The vibe here is much less “I’m looking to the sky to save me” than “I don’t owe you anything.” If the press is going to paint him as a cad, he may as well own it and use that main villain energy to his advantage.
“Nice guys grow on trees/Big smile/Try not to choke on the glitter,” he sneers—possibly to himself—on the devilish title track, as he rides atop a village-pillaging boogie rhythm that barrels in like a post-hardcore ZZ Top. And when he spits out the song’s contemptuous chorus line—“Someone threw away your favorite toy for good!”—it’s as if he’s mocking anyone who ever put him on a pedestal. It’s like his way of saying the old Dave can’t come to the phone right now, while his daughter Harper fires off “nah nah nah” taunts with schoolyard-bully glee. The revved-up rager “Of All People” is even more outwardly scornful, as Grohl recounts a run-in with a former heroin-dealing acquaintance from the ’90s who went on to live a long, healthy life despite slinging a drug that drove so many to an early grave. “You know you should be dead,” Grohl seethes, and he isn’t so much praising the dude for dodging a bullet as wishing karma would hurry up and do its thing.
Fueled by an uncaged-animal energy and caked in speaker-crackling distortion, Your Favorite Toy has Grohl reassuming a position he occupied 30-odd years ago, mugging for the fisheye lens and screaming himself hoarse until the glass shatters. But as much as it echoes the band’s past, the album also affirms the Foos’ investment in their future. After Grohl stepped back behind the kit on But Here We Are (before hiring and firing alt-rock lifer Josh Freese in the interim), the new album serves as a proper initiation for drummer Ilan Rubin. He handily supplies the pure power the job demands but also sneaks in some of the death-disco finesse he honed with Nine Inch Nails and adds some special sauce to the band’s traditional servings of meat and potatoes. Rubin brings a funky gallop to tunes (like “Amen, Caveman”) that otherwise adhere to the standard Foo Fighters game plan of sounding like a Hüsker Dü that can play Super Bowl halftime shows, and on the opening “Caught in the Echo,” he expedites the song’s surprising transformation from a slashing post-punky sidewinder into a horizon-chasing anthem that suggests an overcaffeinated U2.
Alas, Your Favorite Toy can’t get by on adrenaline alone, and its simmered-down moments ultimately put its shortcomings under the microscope: “Window” has the makings of a menacing mid-tempo rocker a la Pearl Jam’s “Not for You,” but its tense build-up is undone by a clunker of a chorus (“I saw your face, there in the window/You were a window cleaner/Letting in the sun/Man, that looks like fun”), while “If You Only Knew” is the mash-up of Lenny Kravitz’s “Fly Away” and Oasis’ “Supersonic” that no one asked for in 1998. And on an album that otherwise counts as the Foos’ leanest and meanest since their 1995 debut, the closing “Asking for a Friend” is a lumbering, melodramatic power ballad better suited to a latter-day Metallica album. However, Your Favorite Toy strikes a harmonious balance between the Foos’ punk-muckraker and arena-crowd-pleaser sides on “Unconditional,” a rare moment where Grohl nominally addresses his personal issues instead of trying to outrun them. With its gliding momentum and confessional tone, the song is sort of like an “Everlong” written after a trip to couples counseling, with the original’s hot-blooded expression of blooming romance replaced by a humbled pledge to do better. In the wake of all the domestic drama that preceded Your Favorite Toy, the song feels like a promise to family and fans alike: He’ll stick around and learn from all that came from it.
