On the Foo Fighters’s third album, Dave Grohl made a conscious effort to juxtapose the abrasive nu metal bands that had become popular during the album’s conception by making There Is Nothing Left to Lose the band’s most restrained album yet. Melodic and full of guitar lines that just glide by even during the loud choruses (of which there are fewer than usual), There Is Nothing Left to Lose remains Foo Fighters’s most tuneful album yet.

The opening song, Stacked Actors, misleads listeners into thinking the album might be even more aggressive than its predecessor with its noisy intro, but shortly after shifts into a smooth beach-side vibe (Ain’t It the Life has a similar thing going on) accompanied by Dave Grohl’s understated but excellent soft vocals that naturally dominate most of the album. While the ballads on The Colour and the Shape were fairly weak and prevented the album from being a consistent listen, here the ballads are the showcase and are fortunately much stronger. Learn to Fly is the hit single of the album, a strong rocker that is still sleek and polished enough to fit into the rest of the album’s sound, and most importantly it has a great riff as a great single should (it’s also the song that got me into the band). My only “beef” with There Is Nothing Left to Lose is that it’s very top heavy, most of the best songs appearing in the first half of the album.

Going back to a much more positive note, Generator is my single favorite Foo Fighters song. I have a personal attachment to the lyrics and the tune itself kicks ass too. I love the use of a talk box to get a surging, electrical tone out of the guitar to fit the theme of the song. Headwires uses similar special effects to get the same tone for the same reason, but lacks the punch of Generator. I love how the chorus seems so much stronger than the verses even though it’s about the same volume. My only disappointment with Generator is that the line “Can’t you hear my motor heart, you’re the one that started it” sacrifices the great potential rhyme of “Can’t you hear my motor heart, you’re the one that makes it start”. #RhymeCrime

There Is Nothing Left to Lose is the surprisingly rare rock album that is very gentle while retaining a sense of toughness and confidence. It’s very graceful, masculine while not unattractively flaunting it, is an overall superior album to The Colour and the Shape, and gets both my votes for personal favorite and the best album by Foo Fighters.

Fun (?) personal fact, this is one of the few albums I have on CD. Like all CDs I have, I got it for free as a hand-me-down from my dad who was a playlist DJ for about a decade. I play it frequently when I’m driving, although I usually just listen to radio talk shows because I find music to be kind of distracting and I don’t want to get so pumped up I don’t realize what I’m doing and become accident-prone. Thanks for reading.