Music

“The nicest guy in rock” is what the common rock journalist says about Dave Grohl. It’s probably the dumbest thought in rock. Niceness, from a total stranger who is also a rock star, is usually just the star’s way of closing his transaction with you more quickly. Let’s settle for something more measurable: Dave Grohl is one of the more practical guys in rock.

Judith Levitt for The New York Times

Dave Grohl, center, and Foo Fighters in their concert Monday at the Beacon Theater, featuring songs from the acoustic half of the band’s 2005 double disc, “In Your Honor.”

Judith Levitt for The New York Times

Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters, with Taylor Hawkins on drums, in concert on Monday.

As the singer and bandleader of Foo Fighters, Mr. Grohl seems like a paperboy doing his rounds, doing his work assuredly, almost plainly. Even when he’s screaming his head off, he’s adhering to his craft, with a confidence that anyone can admire. His is a shapely scream, empty of terror. (Before he works up to it, his voice is strangely anonymous, in the Dave Matthews, regular-dude-with-feelings ballpark.) Mr. Grohl came from punk — he was the drummer in Nirvana, of course, and before that the Washington bands Scream and Dain Bramage — but he isn’t hobbled by credibility issues; he’s not doing what the Clash called “turning rebellion into money.”

His paper route is recording hit rock songs about personal feelings, and he seems to live happily in the middle ground between punk probity and song hooks good enough for an iPod hit. (And don’t forget the obvious fact: he was an incredibly good rock drummer who let go of drumming to stand in front of his band with a guitar.) He has figured out his game to an exhilarating degree. Practicality is his charisma.

Foo Fighters celebrated their 10th anniversary last year with a gesture that indicates how rock stars live large now. They built a new studio and recorded a two-disc set, “In Your Honor,” with rock songs on the first disc, acoustic songs on the second. And after a rock-show tour last year, the band is now performing the acoustic songs in theaters more appropriate to nuance. These songs are sweet, not great. And the acoustic Foo Fighters show at the Beacon Theater on Monday night didn’t come off as pompous, just as gold-plated common sense. “It’s all about the catalog, dude,” Mr. Grohl joked in between songs. Of course he’s right, and maybe it’s even kind of punk to cop to it. But is that all there is?

Mr. Grohl fronted an eight-member version of the band at the Beacon, and true to the ethos of “MTV Unplugged,” all the musicians were sitting down as they played. Their set was most of the acoustic songs from “In Your Honor,” with three guitars, violin, keyboards, bass, drums and percussion; one song by the group’s violinist, Petra Haden; and some old Foo Fighters songs — “Times Like These,” “Everlong,” “My Hero” — that were easily enough adapted to acoustic sounds. They weren’t stripped down at all; the opposite, in fact. They were just pop songs with acoustic guitars and no screaming, and they often showed Mr. Grohl as a student of other practical guys, like Tom Petty and Paul McCartney.

Shows like this, no matter who’s doing them, are opportunities for the star to sit in one place and talk directly to the audience. Mr. Grohl has no problem in that department: he’s almost too good at it, too ingratiating. His raps were fatuous — guffaws about members of the band or why he wrote a certain song — but his timing is good, and in delivering them he channeled many overwrought comic gestures from his friend Jack Black.

It wasn’t until one of the encores, the uneasy, dirt-simple “Friend of a Friend,” that he seemed to unwind. He described the circumstances under which it was written: not long after he had joined Nirvana and moved into a house in Olympia, Wash., with Kurt Cobain and Krist Novoselic. He took his time telling the story, didn’t turn it all into an absurd joke and then just played the song, alone onstage. What a relief.

Frank Black, who opened the show, is Mr. Grohl’s character opposite: he didn’t say a single word to the audience, just appeared alone with an acoustic guitar and bashed through a little under an hour of his own songs, with a rougher guitar tone and a more alienated view of human nature. “Sing for joy,” he sang, unsmiling, in a kind of kaleidoscopic murder ballad with that title. “If nothing else, sing for joy.”

Rahav Segev for The New York Times

LADS ON THE LOOSE: Luke Pritchard, left, and Paul Garred.

LUKE PRITCHARD is an unlikely rock star. A self-proclaimed “awkward guy” with a trained voice and contempt for the trappings of stardom, he is not exactly textbook cool, yet it works.

The Kooks, the band he started in England with three friends from music school, have sold over a million copies of their debut album, “Inside In/Inside Out,” going triple platinum in Britain, and have opened for the Rolling Stones. Mr. Pritchard, 21, often finds himself trailed by schoolgirls too shy to actually approach him.

Yet while the rest of his band spent a recent day off in New York embracing rock history with a visit to CBGB hours before its demolition, their lead singer could be found ice-skating in Central Park.

Later that evening, Mr. Pritchard joked about how silly he must have looked. “I was ice-skating in my skinny jeans,” he said while dining at the seafood restaurant Lure Fishbar in SoHo with his drummer Paul Garred, who wore a pristine CB’s shirt. The band’s teenage guitarist, Hugh Harris, was hanging out at the Hudson Hotel with Pete Denton, who is filling in for the founding bassist, Max Rafferty, while he is on hiatus due to exhaustion.

Mr. Pritchard looked the part of a newly anointed British rock star with his Chelsea boots and thick mop of curls — until he removed his leather jacket and pointed out the duct tape over the brand label. “I’m embarrassed because it’s D&G, but I like the jacket a lot,” he said.

It’s this dichotomy of cool and uncool that makes his music so accessible. With songs about anxiety and impotence, Mr. Pritchard’s lyrical content tends to veer toward the paranoid, but when paired with lively melodies and catchy choruses in the vein of the Kinks, gloom and glee intermingle in a way that would make the Smiths proud.

“We’re like punks with morals,” Mr. Pritchard said. “Pacifist punks.”

“We cause destruction and then apologize immediately,” Mr. Garred continued with a laugh.

“Exactly,” Mr. Pritchard said. “We’re the kind of people who would trash a hotel room and clean it up afterward.”

The Kooks reside in Brighton, a southern seaside city known as London-by-the-Sea, and have no plans to make the expected move to the capital city. “Everyone in London thinks they’re wicked,” Mr. Pritchard said.

While sipping on hot sake, the men debated what to drink next. When Mr. Garred requested a Sapporo, the waitress asked Mr. Pritchard if he would like one, too.

“No, I’m not that hungry.”

“It’s a beer,” she said. “Sapporo.”

“Oh, is that a beer?” he replied, breaking into hysterics with Mr. Garred. “I thought you said tempura!” The laughter continued when moments later, Mr. Pritchard reached for what he thought was vinegar and doused a bowl of potato chips in soy sauce.

After dinner, they strolled over to Bleecker Street. “New York is cinematic; it’s like being in a movie,” said Mr. Pritchard, who was recognized six times on his first day in New York, not bad considering that the band’s album was just recently released in the United States.

The men met their bandmates and friends at the blues bar Terra Blues. Once inside, the Englishmen were awestruck by the seasoned American blues musicians in Moe Holmes and the Pioneers, and before long Mr. Pritchard was summoned to the stage. After proving himself with an acoustic version of one of his own tunes, he was backed by the band on the old blues song “Nobody’s Fault but Mine.”

His performance met with wild applause, prompting Mr. Holmes, who has played with the likes of Jimi Hendrix and Ike and Tina Turner, to announce to the crowd, “Just remember you saw Luke here first.”