Album: Foo Fighters, Wasting Light (Columbia)

Just because it was recorded in Dave Grohl's garage doesn't make Wasting Light garage-rock, even if it was captured on analogue tape by Nirvana producer Butch Vig.

Real garage-rock has a primitive, lightning-in-a-bottle quality almost entirely absent from the chugging riffs that make up the Foo Fighters' seventh album. Worse, the presumed desire for back-to-the-roots simplicity (which sees guest spots from Grohl's old Nirvana buddy Krist Novoselic and Husker Du's Bob Mould) jettisons the diversity of Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace. Save for some brief , quiet arpeggios on "These Days", the album proceeds at the same bombastic level throughout, "impassioned" shouty choruses arriving with weary predictability. The three-year gap between albums will ensure this tops next week's album chart, but it's a drab, unrewarding experience.

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