In Your Honor

Background

After touring in support of One by One, Dave Grohl was uncertain on what to do next with the Foo Fighters. He felt that rushing to do another record would not be creatively rewarding. Grohl considered a possible film score, and began writing acoustic songs, eventually amassing a full album's worth of songs. which Grohl described as "the bottle and the hangover", and also with the rock record being "my Jack and Coke record" with songs that "I realise I cannot live without that", and the acoustic being "my Sapphire-and-Martini-with-Kylie record". Grohl also stated a decisive moment in making a double album was uploading demos to his computer and realizing he had five hours of music, adding that "we've been a band for 10 years now, this is our fifth record, and I thought it would be boring to just keep making album after album and making videos and playing festivals, so I wanted to do something special."

The album was recorded in a new recording studio built in a warehouse in Northridge, California, named Studio 606 West in contrast to the original Studio 606 in Grohl's basement in Alexandria, Virginia. Development for In Your Honor took nine months While waiting for 606 to get finished, the band rehearsed on North Hollywood's Mates Rehearsal Studios, where "we ended up with three or four different versions of about 30 songs", according to Raskulinecz who added that "it got to the point where I didn't want them to play the rock songs anymore. I was afraid they were going to get stale."

Recording

The sessions ran from January to March 2005, with only two and a half weeks spent on the acoustic record. Forty tracks were recorded – fifteen of them acoustic – with half of them ending on the final track list. Studio 606 was not finished as the band moved in, and the band members even helped with the final stages of construction, "hammering, stuffing insulation — doing whatever to speed the process." Eight of the rock songs were last-minute compositions done after the acoustic record was finished, as "Dave started feeling that it was better than the rock record." The songs were recorded on analog tape—which was reused over and over due to a tape shortage and a desire to save money—before being transferred to Pro Tools for overdubs, editing and mixing. Raskulinecz mixed the rock songs, while Elliot Scheiner mixed the stereo and 5.1 versions of the acoustic sides.

The band entered the studio with most of the songs finished and rehearsed; The electric album was done in segments by instrument, starting with the drums and guitars, then vocals, and finally bass.

During the last three weeks of work on the rock songs, the band was in the studio "from noon to eight in the morning, making the rock record the most devastating thing we've ever done". The rushed approach prevented Mendel writing bass lines, so he ended up "concentrating on just finding the notes and getting the rhythm right."

Grohl declared that "making this record revitalized this band", particularly the acoustic songs, as they "showed ourselves what we're capable of doing" and "[made] things scary again. You do something that you've never done, and it makes you feel like a bigger band." The frontman also stated the mellower acoustic disc was an opportunity to use "the acoustic tracks we wrote in the past eight or nine years, but never put on albums because they never seemed to fit",

Preparing the acoustic album, Grohl decided he would improve it with guest appearances, and made a list of musicians he would like to work with, such as Warren Haynes and Grant Hart. Guests that appeared on the record included Norah Jones, John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin, and Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age.

John Paul Jones agreed to appear as he was in Los Angeles for the Grammy Awards. Grohl described his appearance as the "second-greatest thing to happen to me in my life" behind his marriage.

Norah Jones was brought for the bossa nova "Virginia Moon" after Grohl heard her record and considered that his song was "her vibe" and Jones' voice "was so smooth and warm that I figured it would work out great with mine."

The Wallflowers' keyboard player Rami Jaffee and That Dog.'s violinist Petra Haden also contributed to the album, and were later drafted for the Foo Fighters' touring band.

Composition

The double album has a disc of rock songs and another with acoustic ones, which Grohl said demonstrated his artistic freedom – "It's not one specific genre of music, it's not one specific style. I'm just a musician. I can play all these different instruments, I can write a bossa nova, I can write a thrash tune." He also stated that he tried to fit the Foo Fighters sound even with stylistic differences: "It's still the same four guys playing it so it just is a Foo Fighters song, whether it sounds like Carcass or fucking Ry Cooder."

The band tried to do the albums without a "middle ground" sound, The arrangements were aiming for complexity: "This record is much more elaborate than just an acoustic guitar and a vocal. And the songs were written to hold more orchestration. We've never had accordions and pump organs and cellos and stand up bass." The acoustic guitar sound has influences of Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson, with open notes in conjunction with fretted notes.

The lyrics on the rock album tried to focus on "general themes that everyone can get their hands on", while the acoustic had introspective lyrics that are "vulnerable and revealing", with things Grohl "wouldn't say out loud, wouldn't even admit to myself." and that "I don't know what it is about, this album, that makes it sound more heartfelt or deeper or more emotional, but when I listen to it, it really is." and "Still", talking about a suicide Grohl saw when he was ten in Virginia, by a boy who jumped on the train tracks.

Release and promotion

The price of the album was just one dollar above what is paid for a regular single-disc CD, as Grohl thought the albums "complemented each other in one package, and I don't need any more money". The first 25,000 US copies were in a special edition DualDisc set containing a "making of" documentary in the first disc, and the second disc in 5.1 surround sound. RCA also issued 5,000 copies of a quadruple vinyl LP record. which later led to a scandal as its rootkit-like nature made computers vulnerable to malware.

The promotional campaign included the MTV special 24 Hours of Foo. British, and Australian charts. Follow-up "DOA" was released on August 22, after an early debut as a ringtone for Cingular cell phones. Like "Best of You" it proceeded to top Billboards Modern Rock Songs chart. "Resolve" and a double A-side of "No Way Back" and "Cold Day in the Sun" were also issued as singles. "No Way Back" was included in the video games Madden NFL 06 and Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock. In addition, the song "Resolve" and "Miracle" in the TV series The West Wing where the band performed the latter two songs in "Election Day, Part 1" and "Election Day, Part 2" respectively. Nearly fifteen years after the album's release, "Razor" appeared on an episode of The Flash.

The release was promoted with the In Your Honor Tour. The tour began in the summer of 2005, and ran through to June 2006. It featured two shows per city, an electric one in arenas and an acoustic in smaller venues. Among the additional band for the acoustic shows was guitarist Pat Smear, who had been in the Foo Fighters from 1995 to 1997, and followed the In Your Honor Tour with another five years as a touring musician before rejoining as a full-time member for the recording of Wasting Light.

Critical reception

In Your Honor was generally met with positive reviews. At Metacritic, a website that assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 70, based on 26 reviews.

Writing for The New York Times, Jon Pareles considered the album "an unexpected magnum opus", and while Pareles felt that "the rock CD overpowers the acoustic one", he considered that "among the quieter songs, there are enough supple melodies and hypnotic guitar patterns to suggest fine prospects for a follow-through album". Tom Sinclair of Entertainment Weekly described the discs of In Your Honor as "the outdoors and indoors sides", with the rockers "pack[ing] an intoxicating wallop: 90-proof rock for 90-degree weather, they'll sound terrific blasting from convertibles, open windows, boom boxes, and at barbecues and beach parties" and the acoustic songs "all very pretty—sometimes scarily so", ultimately concluding that "you'll probably revisit the rockin' half more often". While Mike Schiller of PopMatters considered that "In Your Honor has some great tunes, but it is by no means perfect", he praised the rock songs for "indications of just how loud this band can get", and regarding the acoustic tracks, wrote that "despite the down-tempo feel, the songs are infectious".

Some reviewers found In Your Honor overlong and inconsistent. Writing for Rolling Stone, Barry Walters praised the acoustic songs, while considering that In Your Honor "could have been easily pruned down to one disc", claiming the rock songs besides "Resolve" "strain so hard that the melody gets lost" and went in a "cartoonish headbanging fashion" that "accentuates the band's self-inflicted one-dimensionality", and that the "sameness and vagueness of [Grohl's] love lyrics blunt their impact". Bram Teitelman of Billboard felt that "by isolating the electric and acoustic sides, the concept comes off as repetitious" and ultimately concluding that "by scaling back their ambitions, the Foos could have made one great album instead of two average ones." Pitchforks Amanda Petrusich described the record as "sterile and controlled", the double disc conceit as "heavy handed, the segregation too deliberate" and the rock songs as repetitive. Edna Gundersen of USA Today gave the album two-and-a-half stars out of four and said, "Though its most smartly crafted tunes and liveliest performances don't measure up to the band's finest, Honor is an honorable effort, full of the brawn and vigor that keeps the Foos in fighting shape."

Commercial performance

The album entered the Billboard 200 and the UK Albums Chart at number two behind Coldplay's X&Y (the worldwide best selling album of 2005) with the strongest initial sales of their entire career this far–310,500 copies in the United States and 159,179 in the UK. In Your Honor also topped the charts in Australia, Finland, New Zealand and Ireland, and reached the top five in Canada, Austria and Denmark.

As of December 2011, In Your Honor has sold 1,442,000 units in North America, being their third most successful album behind Foo Fighters and The Colour and the Shape. It was also certified Platinum by the RIAA. The album reached multi-platinum status in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom.

Accolades

The album was up for five Grammy Awards at the 48th Grammy Awards: Best Rock Album, Best Surround Sound Album, both Best Rock Song and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal for "Best of You", and Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals for "Virginia Moon". It ultimately lost all awards, the band's first album since The Colour and the Shape to not receive a Grammy. Kerrang! ranked In Your Honor as the 9th best album of 2005, while Rolling Stone put it as 30th best.

Track listing

Personnel

Personnel taken from In Your Honor liner notes.

Foo Fighters

• Dave Grohl – vocals, rhythm guitar, tambourine, drums on "Cold Day in the Sun"
• Nate Mendel – bass
• Taylor Hawkins – drums, vocals and tambourine on "Cold Day in the Sun"
• Chris Shiflett – lead guitar

Additional musicians

• Joe Beebe – guitar on "Virginia Moon"
• Danny Clinch – harmonica on "Another Round"
• Petra Haden – violin on "Miracle"
• Josh Homme – guitar on "Razor"
• Rami Jaffee – keyboards on "Still", "What If I Do?", "Another Round", "Over and Out", "On the Mend" and "Cold Day in the Sun"
• John Paul Jones – piano on "Miracle" and mandolin on "Another Round"
• Norah Jones – vocals and piano on "Virginia Moon"
• Nick Raskulinecz – double bass on "On the Mend" and bass on "Cold Day in the Sun" Production
• Foo Fighters – production
• Nick Raskulinecz – production, mixing (disc 1)
• Mike Terry – engineering
• Elliot Scheiner – mixing (disc 2)
• Bob Ludwig – mastering

Design

• Dan Winters – photography
• Danny Clinch – additional photos
• Brett Kilroe – additional art and "Crest" concept
• Robin C. Hendrickson – additional art and "Crest" concept
• Kevin Reagan – art direction, design
• Bret Healey – design

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Decade-end chart

Certifications

References

Notes

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