Your Favorite Toy

The title track of the Foo Fighters' 12th album, "Your Favorite Toy" is a biting, high-energy critique of vanity and the disposable nature of modern life.

On paper, "Your Favorite Toy" sounds almost cuddly: something involving Lego, perhaps, or a slightly battered Action Man. In practice, it's a high-octane sermon on the speed with which today's treasures become tomorrow's landfill. The "toy" of the title is a metaphor for sudden loss, that queasy moment when something (or someone) you assumed would last forever is abruptly relegated to the thrift shop of fate.

While the band's previous album, But Here We Are, was forged in grief - shaped by the deaths of drummer Taylor Hawkins and Dave Grohl's mother - "Your Favorite Toy" is what happens when mourning trades its black armband for a leather jacket. The sorrow hasn't vanished; it's simply been rerouted through a fuzz pedal. Instead of elegy, we get ignition. Instead of tears, sparks.