My ears are ringing. Blasting the new U2 album SONGS OF INNOCENCE six times through since yesterday afternoon will do that to you. This is easily my favorite record from them since Pop. SONGS OF INNOCENCE has so much Ive missed from U2 since the mid-90s: Big fat bass lines from Adam Clayton; real live drums from Larry Mullen Jr. (instead of the prominent, processed, electronic stuff weve been hearing for so long). Edge uses *all* the guitars (including sounds from Where the Streets Have No Name, With or Without You, and Mysterious Ways). Bonos voice is in top form, and hes written a set of songs that holds together as a deep meditation on childhood losses and wounds and discoveries. Listen closely and youll catch sly references to, echoes of, and expansions on lines from previous songs. For a long time, hes been writing with a frenetic, hyperactive style, flinging himself from one image to another like a highly caffeinated slam-poetry contestant. Here, he seems to have settled down as a writer while charging himself up as a performer. Theres a focus in these lyrics that matches the energy in his performance, as he patiently develops poetic images over whole songs without being hyperactive to reach for desperate rhymes. There are songs for heroes, for old friends, for his wife, for his mother, and there are psalms and prayers underlining everything. Every Breaking Wave and Iris are two of the strongest songs hes ever written. I hate to say it, but leaving Brian Eno behind may have been one of the best moves on this record; the new producers and musicians seem to have reinvigorated the bands sound. While its a little too obvious that every song has been calculated and concentrated in the hopes of scoring a hit -- and while my *favorite* U2 work has been more experimental, dark, and strange -- the band sounds like theyre all in the room, like theyre focused on playing together instead of to the crowd, and like they want to wire their work directly to our ears instead of playing underlayers of Enos synthesized gauze. Thank God.
Posted on: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 15:31:31 +0000
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