At some point, U2 wanted to be cool. Smartly, they decided that rather than ripping off bluesmen and pretending to be American like they did for the past 4 years, they said "hey, let's try a new style by stealing other aspects of other people's music. like that young crap kids listen to these days". SO, Maurice Star came in and the rest is history...
Well, actually, Eno and Lanois went with the boys to Berlin were they hoped to rekindle the spirit of a long creatively-dead David Bowie and create a new experimental album of STUFF! that didn't work, so they went back to Ireland and wrote and recorded the album.
How does it sound? Well, that's up to you. Personally, this was the first U2 album I heard, as it was born shortly after I was, so this album is my childhood. I remember watching the music videos for it, like "even better for the real thing", which included them all falling or something. i don't know, i had a VHS tape of it somewhere...
here, U2 went for a "harsh" sound, meaning everything sounds like it was recorded by Robert Pollard. and all the songs are 45 seconds long. well, neither of that's true! but, its really distorted! and noisy! and the mix gets a little weird! I say this all in terms of U2 albums. I mean, you won't confuse this with "Confusion is Sex", but if you LOVED "the Unforgettable Fire", this might cheese you off a bit. However, it did sell 18 million copies.
I chose to review this because I listened to it while driving to Boston a month ago while moving there, and when I visited my aunt earlier this evening, we watched Bono make a fool out of himself wearing a light up suit, singing into a steering wheel, swining on it like a Cirque du Soliei character to the song "ultraviolet (light my way)", which i genuinely like. so, i listened to the album while making cookies and said "i'm gonna review this".
It brought me to a time where Bono wasn't embarrasing as much. Where he was "cool". But not "Pop"-era cool. And where he was breaking "new" ground, but not like "No Line on the Horizon" new ground. And he was "rocking", and not like "vertigo" rocking, and for one brief time, he didn't care about Africa. Such a simpler time. Now, I feel like to watch him could be a chore. I mean, there's no reason for him to sing "Bad" while wearing a light-up suit made from laser pointers while screaming about children not having clean water. I wonder how much water and energy it takes for the U2 road crew to make it through one performance? or what about how much paper it took Rolling Stone to print the same article on U2 its been printing for the past 7 years about "a back to basics, yet extravagant rock show" complete with crappy journalism and a GLOWING review of the new Pearl Jam album by Rob Sheffield, who you can see on VH1 talking about who knows what. (not to dis on Pearl Jam, but nothing is THAT great if "bugs" isn't on it).. And, the suit isn't a joke, it actually happened.
I fail to see any emotion or worthwile value in U2's most recent work.
That's why I'll listen to this.
OVERALL RATING - fine job boys! how about you and me and the fellers all get a burger together?
KEY TRACKS - ultraviolet, zoo station, until the end of the world, tryin' to throw your arms around the world.
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