A Fighter, Not a Writer

FOO FIGHTERS

“Foo Fighters”

Roswell/Capitol

* * 1/2

It’s fitting that the first music from the Nirvana camp since Kurt Cobain’s death would pour out in an exuberant rush of release and rediscovery. “This Is the Call” opens the debut album from ex-drummer Dave Grohl’s new band with a blend of Beach Boys vocal lift and urgent pounding that summarizes the Grohl M.O.: punk bite and pop buoyancy.

That’s a legacy of his last band, but in the hands of Foo Fighters--which is virtually all Grohl on this album, recorded just before he put together a permanent lineup--it takes a less tortured course.

Grohl’s briny voice occasionally taunts or rants, but even then his twangy tone is inherently amiable, and he doesn’t seem interested in delivering something with the weight of Nirvana.

The problem comes when you try to see what’s driving this urgent, energetic music. Grohl’s lyrics are so sketchy and fragmentary that they often seem like random word-association exercises. That leaves a major void at the core of the album, and while nobody expects Grohl to be Cobain, he needs to find a way to make it clear that he’s somebody .

New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor), two stars (fair), three stars (good) and four stars (excellent).