Your Favorite Toy

This is a snapshot of a band that has conquered mountains and achieved grand things while proving you can still find those edges at the peak that go a little higher.

It’s a tremendous return, and all the more gratifying for its honesty.

Your Favorite Toy can be slashing and scabrous; sometimes it’s downright bleak (as on the moody assessment of fame “Child Actor” or the pessimistic, politically-tinged “Amen, Caveman”). But at 10 fast, extremely catchy songs, it flies by and demands repeat immersion.

The Foo Fighters return in defiant fashion with an album that refuses to let up from start to finish.

If "back-to-basics" sounds like your ideal Foo Fighters mode, then Your Favorite Toy is one of their best to date.

Foo Fighters like this feel fresh, energised and essential.

Grohl can still subvert his own formula: opener Caught In The Echo brilliantly synthesises Ian MacKaye with Paul McCartney, and the needling pulse of Window is superior Josh Homme-age. The wired Child Actor, meanwhile, reveals a conflicted man behind the persona. [Jun 2026, p.86]

Your Favorite Toy won’t be remembered as one of Foo Fighters’ essential albums, but it is maybe the most honest — or at least the most self-aware.

The first half of the album leans harder toward the raucous with driving rhythms, distortion all around, and full-throated vocals. .... The album takes a noticeably more contemplative turn with “Unconditional,” which has distant echoes of “Learn to Fly.” ... . It’s hard to not see this as more of a beginning.

Grohl claims the title track set the tone for this self-produced set, which squares with its adrenalised, garage-rock push, though not its cheeky nods to Quo and ZZ Top. Variety is the byword. [Jun 2026, p.29]

‘Your Favorite Toy’ is a few more tracks of that depth away from being the most vital Foo Fighters record since 1997’s ‘The Colour and the Shape’. For now, at least, they have remembered that no-frills punk, played fast and loud, suits them much better than middle-of-the-road dad-rock.

There’s some filler – If You Only Knew and Window come across as a bit anonymous compared to the more ferocious tracks such as the title track or the almost feral-sounding Spit Shine. Yet, for the most part, Your Favorite Toy sounds like a band with a renewed sense of purpose, and one that is ready to use the pain of the last few years as an inspiration.

On an album that otherwise counts as the Foos’ leanest and meanest since their 1995 debut, the closing “Asking for a Friend” is a lumbering, melodramatic power ballad better suited to a latter-day Metallica album. However, Your Favorite Toy strikes a harmonious balance between the Foos’ punk-muckraker and arena-crowd-pleaser sides on “Unconditional.”

While they try subtle new tricks, like compressing Grohl’s vocals to almost-grating levels amid muddy sound mixing, their attempts at sounding edgy usually land in a pleasant middle ground.

Ultimately settling into a safe, at times boring sonic bubble.

On Your Favorite Toy, it's all loud and all fast all the time. (One notable exception is "If You Only Knew," a relatively straightforward rock song that nonetheless stands out thanks to an excellent hook.) Compounding this problem is the fact that Grohl remains a frustratingly boring lyricist.