Live Earth hero Dave Grohl has mentioned Steely Dan as a big influence on the Foo Fighters during the making of their sixth album, and after an advance listen to September 25’s Echoes, Silence, Patience and Grace, we know why: Echoes has a distinct ’70s-rock undercurrent. There are sonic references to early-’70s Zeppelin, late-era Beatles and Bruce Springsteen tossed throughout the otherwise typically loud, brawny and stadium-ready power tunes.

Opening track and likely lead single “The Pretender” is a classic Foos tune — all tight, urgent structure building to expansive, choral crescendos. We’re big fans of the more mellow, magnificently Springsteen-like summer jam “Long Road to Ruin” and the spare, almost confessional “Stranger Things Have Happened.” Other noteworthy tracks include “The Ballad of the Beaconsfield Miners” (an instrumental Grohl wrote and put on the album, as promised, for two men who were trapped in a goldmine in Tasmania 2006) and “But Honestly” and “Home,” the last two tracks on the album, which feature Grohl playing piano for the first time ever on a Foo Fighters record. (Rolling Stone)