I was downtown having a few drinks
at Valeria’s Mexican Restaurant when I saw the news. Some 5 years
after their last release No Line on the Horizon, U2 returned with
their latest album entitled Songs of Innocence (I immediately
caught the William Blake reference and enthralled everyone on the streets with
my acumen!). But not only did they return, they decided to announce
the new record at an Apple conference (the company, not the fruit) and
immediately release the album to all Apple iTunes customers at no cost,
effectively reaching half a billion people in one fell swoop. This
news pleased me like a refreshing glass of fruit punch as I consider U2 to be
one of my favorite bands of all time though I was bitterly disappointed with
their 2009 release and eventually concluded it to be the worst of their
albums. Still, that’s just one man’s humble opinion and I’m always
ready to enthusiastically embrace new material as I would a former lover who
had just put on 30 extra pounds.
I immediately went home and logged
into my iTunes account, downloaded the album onto my iPod (while my iPhone was
charging with the iCharger) and then rushed back to Valeria’s with my iPod and
iPod iEarbuds for the virgin listen. You see, I could not possibly
stay away from Valeria’s because Alicia and Angelica were working. Oh
sweet weighty goddesses with their huge behinds, oh wonderful pleasures of the
flesh, how I adore you.
And so it was that I stared at these
two women while also reflecting upon the strange circumstances that led to my
own bizarre life. The files I’d also brought to the restaurant for
review and analysis were of the most confidential nature and very soon I would
be deciding the ultimate fates of no less than 3 men. This task
weighed heavily on me and as I stared and reflected and considered and drank I
also opened up my waxy earholes and began to listen.
The Miracle (of Joey Ramone) – The album started off in a sheepish manner and would
have put me in a piss poor mood had I not been at Valeria’s. I’m not
sure who this song is in reference to but this is yet another tune whose chorus
(or maybe it’s the pre-chorus in this case) is a chant of nothing in particular
(or perhaps “Whooooooooooaaaaaawhooooooaaaa” is something in the ancient
Sumerian language – the oldest language known to man and which I believe was
first spoken and then subsequently passed down by ancient astronauts that now
abduct us from our homes and perform horrifying medical experiments on us as
part of a nefarious endgame the likes of which we cannot begin to imagine) and
though it is a decent chant it is also perhaps the only memorable part of the
song. This strikes a rough note with me because I hate how stupid
nonsensical chants have become a norm in popular music choruses these
days. Worse yet, the production (by Danger Mouse who handles
production duties on the whole thing) coupled with those chants reminds of that
godawful Imagine Dragons song (take your pick). I would rather have
an opening song with no chorus at all (like Sometimes by Pearl Jam off the No
Code album) than something like this. It did manage to grow
on me a bit like a viral fungus over the course of its duration and I suppose
it is suitably uplifting for an opener but it was not particularly
impressive.
It was here that I flashed back
briefly to a time I shared with my beloved friend Calvin Black. A
former pilot, Black was sharing with me the extensive difficulties he had in
enacting a foreign based operation and chiefly noted his belief that the armed
force are far too constrained by an abundance of red tape. I
remember I agreed with home wholeheartedly at the time and we proceeded to eat
a delicious breakfast of Belgian waffles slathered in syrup, strawberries and
topped off with a dollop of whip cream along with a side of scrambled eggs,
extra crispy bacon, sourdough dry toast and a tall glass of orange juice.
Every Breaking New Wave – I think I may love this song. It is
soaring and anthemic and all those other things people love to say about their
best songs. I don’t think it quite ranks among the best because it
does feel like a rehash but it is at least a highly enjoyable rehash. Bono’s
vocals soar and there is some rather interesting interplay between his singing
and Edge’s guitar playing during the chorus. It has a widescreen
scope to it and seems like a successful version of the song Magnificent from
their last album. The only thing which drags it down is that it just
peters out rather than moving to an appropriately righteous conclusion.
Song for Someone – I felt familiar comfort upon hearing the lovely
lilting notes which begin this song and then Bono’s voice comes in pitch
perfect and the harmony actually sweetens it. This is a great song
but it’s not quite fucking great and that’s a bit of a shame! The
bridge is a tad weak and like the last track it just kind of ends rather than
letting that sweet chorus swell until it makes me want to bite my own tongue
off! I must admit after the last album and the rockiness of the
opening I found myself wondering if these guys still had it in them and they
thankfully showed they clearly do.
California – I am honestly sick to grisly death of songs about
California. How many does the world actually need I ask myself while
throwing back 5 cups of cafe in rapid succession, each with 3 sugars and 4
creams. This song isn’t complete horseshit, it has a nice sonic
landscape I can appreciate and some tasteful bass licks but Bono’s vocals
actually annoy me a bit on this one and that hurts. I love Bono’s
voice so much that when it annoys me it is like someone has made a delicious
turkey on rye sandwich and then slapped me with the piece of mayonnaise
drenched white bread. Ultimately forgettable.
Iris (Hold Me Close) – Classic sounding Edge guitar throughout this number
though the Bonster is maybe holding back a little. This is a pretty
song but one that does not leaving a deep impression for some reason. It’s
definitely one worth revisiting though as I suspect it may yield some rewards
on repeated listens. If one wants to talk deep impressions they
should try and track down a bootlegged copy of my boxing match with Sugar Ray
Leonard in the steamy summer of 76’. I had Ray up against the ropes
and was giving him a couple to the head before taking it to the body. I
was doling out a substantial amount of punishment and then the cut on my
chiseled brow which I’d sustained in the third round dripped blood into my eye
and that half second of surprise was all Ray needed to lash out with his
terrific right and send me sprawling across the floor. My girlfriend
at the time was a beautiful and dangerously full figured woman named Leticia
who had a penchant for leopard print pants which were often stretched to the
max around her mammoth thighs and gloriously lethal mountainous ass and I could
hear her screaming from the front row for me to get my pathetic self up and
continue the fight like I had a pair. But I just couldn’t
move. Sugar had sent me down for the count and I lost it all that
night: my money, my girlfriend, my endorsements and my dreams.
Volcano – This starts off with a jaunty but familiar sounding
bassline and I was worried we were going into another faux funk old-man rock
song like Get On Your Boots (or Vertigo if it was never your thing). Unfortunately
that’s exactly what happened. This is weak, tepid rock and I am
invoking the heavens that they may cease to write these types of songs. Or
maybe they should just write a couple dozen of them to get them all out of
their system and release a double disc hard rock album that I can dutifully
ignore. Honestly, I can’t figure out why a song like this fails so
hard for me but a song like The Fly from Achtung Baby or
Daddy’s Gonna Pay For Your Crashed Car from Zooropa sound so
great. Volcano feels very sketchy, very incomplete. It
almost brings a tear to my eye with its basic lack of…everything.
Raised by Wolves – Similarly awful to the previous track. Hookless,
melodyless, anythingatallinterestingless. At least those were my
initial thoughts. However after an unforgivably droning 1 minute 45
seconds the song becomes somewhat interesting when the chorus hits and Bono wails
like a man on fire. The second time around though that chorus
becomes as annoying as I suspected it was. For some reason this tune
makes me think of something from Incubus’s last couple of albums. Yes,
I realize now it reminds me of their song Love Hurts from the Love
Grenades album. Good ol’ Incubus with their songs like Love
Hurts and Wish You Were Here! I wonder if on their next album
they’ll have a song called Stairway to Heaven or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts
Club Band!? After finishing this latest U2 collection I’m going to
re-listen to every Incubus album 27 times in a row.
It was at this venture that Alicia
again walked passed and began cleaning some tables. I thanked the
cosmos for such a blissful distraction. She had married in the previous
year and was finally starting to put on the glorious comfort weight, turning
her already generous and shapely figure into a voluptuous dream that made my
eyes bulge and my groin throb with the power of the bass coming from the
speakers of an iRadio system. She was wearing impossibly tight black
pants and every time she walked by I nearly fell out of my chair in my effort
to follow the wonderful jiggle and quake of her massive buttocks. Her
smile also melted my heart and the mole next to her lip was the perfect touch
that drove me loco and forced me to order repeated shots of El Capitan
tequila.
Cedarwood Road – the last couple songs left me quite emotionally
drained and I wasn’t initially sure I should dare to venture on. The
guitar riffs at the beginning seemed to promise another rocker and on first
listen I immediately screamed and nearly hurled the iPod across the room in
horror as though it were a poison dart frog. Fortunately it doesn’t
try quite as hard to be as hip or slammin’ as the previous 2 songs but it
doesn’t try at very much else either and as it ends I find it has already faded
from my memory and the sinister black hole that makes up the back half of this
album only grows ever larger and more ominous by the second, threatening to suck
in me and anyone else unlucky enough to step in front of it.
Sleep Like A Baby Tonight – it was with a palpable sense of dread that I let the
album play on to the next track but it turns out I was allowed some reprieve
here. This song starts out with fantastic atmosphere provided by the
haunting and steady electronic pulse and Bono’s affected voice. The
band – suddenly and perhaps inexplicably remembering they once made beautiful,
unique music – kicks it into high gear about a minute in and that also sounds
shockingly great. Bono’s vocals on the bridge sound oddly under
produced and I haven’t decided how I feel about that yet given the album’s
overall heavy-handed production and because the high notes do not come quite as
smooth to him as before. The chorus is quite memorable and I may
call this tune a highlight of the album though that is admittedly low praise at
this point.
Angelica was kind enough to bring me
more food and drink then, eyeing me with barely disguised sympathy. She
was no less an example of poetry in motion as her co-worker. Similarly
sturdily built, she opted for a skirt instead of pants and complimented this by
wearing nude colored pantyhose and black high heels. As she served
me more rich portions of food I could not help but make the correlation between
all the delicious mouthwatering meat and cheese stuffed into the enchiladas
before me and all the glorious meat crammed into the hosiery and straining the
heels on those deliriously lucky shoes. Her coal black hair trailed
down her back down to her enormous derriere and I longed for both of these
goddesses to tell me what an ugly and pathetic loser I really am, to force me
into submission and laugh at my inadequacies!
This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now – No sooner do they turn things around that they decide to
bring it back with another face meltingly terrible midtempo rocker. Something
about a “soldier, soldier” and generic harmonized vocals and chants which
eliminate any chance of interesting dynamics in this already nonexistent melody
(this talk style of singing sounds more like a guide vocal than anything
else. Seriously, what the fucking fuck has happened to these
guys?! How is this even fucking possible?!). This is the
second longest song on the album and I can’t imagine what made them think this
was one of the ones most deserving of a protracted running time.
The Troubles (featuring Lykke Li): Yeah guys, the real troubles
began when you started writing this stinker of an album, hahahaha. Good thing you gave it away for free. Typical calm, center of the storm we write
about important stuff U2 closer. Meh, not bad, I was mostly thankful
to just finally be done with the fucking thing. Lykke Li sounds more
interesting in the chorus here than Bono (or anyone else in the band) did for
most of the album. But the main melody is very reminiscent of Duran
Duran song Come Undone and/or The Smashing Pumpkins song Mayonaise which makes
me angry because those are both far better songs. But fuck, at least they
bothered to include a melody in this one!
That must have been Li’s doing and they probably fought her the whole
way on it.
The album ended, I ordered another
drink and started the whole thing over again, needing to rid myself of the
trickiness of first impressions. The second listen was slightly
better but that was largely because my nerves were no longer in such a state of
shock and the tequila had calmed my restless spirit. The songs I
thought I liked seemed less appealing the second time around but I think that
was the eyeball gouging disappointment of the album as a whole rubbing off on
the few bright spots. The restaurant was closing so I plunked down a
large stack of bills and stumbled out, mumbling some feverish goodbyes. I
took one last long back at these weighty beauties with their wonderful dark
skin, hair black as night and tremendous jiggling rumps and stepped out into
the world. I stumbled through the alleys and passed by bums who
smelled like shit and piss and one who had some kind of growth the size of a half-dollar
on his lower lip. I considered ending their misery but knew this
would be nothing more than a panacea for the pain of my own failed existence
and opted instead to pass out alongside them. Sleeping in trash and
shit with rodents and cockroaches crawling on me, I finally felt at home. U2
had ruined my evening.
It’s hard to summarize my thoughts
when they are almost all so very negative. I don’t know if this is
more Danger Mouse or U2’s wishes or likely some ghastly hybrid of the two but
there is a strong indie hipster pop vibe throughout A LOT of this work that
sounds so cheap and calculated and actually embarrassing for a band of U2’s age
and stature. However this does neatly align with this release’s
overall lack of hook or anything in the way of interesting melodies. I
dare say this is probably the weakest set of melodies Bono has put together for
his vocals. I don’t want to speculate on diminished technical
ability but there surely must be a more graceful way for his singing to
age. It also seems The Edge did not feel there was any need to write
any remotely interesting guitar parts for this album and just plays riffs which
are interchangeable with almost anybody. Adam Clayton and Larry
Mullen Jr. all but disappear. Song structure is depressingly
predicable and I wish some experimentation would show up somewhere. The
quick ends became something of a sloppy theme of the album, a signature
component of the record’s sound – though maybe I should be thankful that most
of these songs did not last too long! I still can’t believe I’m
saying things like this about a U2 album!
But damnit, statements like the ones
I made above are unfair! I know these guys are not slackers, content
to rest on their laurels. I know they sweat each album and that their
music is a pure spiritual release for them (at least I think I know this) and
they have made some of the most amazing music imaginable. I know I
will listen to this album many more times in an attempt at discovery and trying
to unlock something here I can connect with but I would love to know what the
group was thinking/feeling when they wrote these songs and understand their
perception of the music presented here. I would have no trouble
right now calling this U2’s worst album and I would have a lot of trouble
trying to recommend it to someone. Bono has mentioned that a
follow-up album titled Songs of
Experience should be ready shortly and I honestly don’t know whether I
should be relieved or horrified.
I’m very curious what the critical
consensus will be though I’m sure that if he hasn’t already David Fricke of
Rolling Stone will give this one another perfect score. Fuck,
I bet he’ll give it 10 out of 5 stars and say it’s better than War, All
That You Can’t Leave Behind, Zooropa, Achtung Baby and The Joshua Tree put together. He’ll
probably conclude by saying it’s the best album ever recorded!
I’ll say some positive things
now. They are whizzes at marketing and it was super canny to launch
this with the iPhone 6 as the amount of publicity they are receiving is
staggering. Much of the music sounds like it was designed for
stadiums (though there is not a single song I would really want to hear live,
even the ones I do like have been done before and much better) and this is
likely all grand promotion for an imminent world tour announcement where they can
rake in even more money, moulah, dough, greenbacks, pesos, bread, coin, bank, dead
presidents, cabbage. But how I yearn in my heart of hearts for the
days of yore when U2 would put out an album as an artistic statement and not as
simple marketing and concert prologue. However there have been
songs and albums which did not click with me or make complete sense until I saw
their live renditions so I am hopeful something like that will happen here. And
even with two dud albums (or ten! Or 100!) I would still say I love
you too U2 and I will try my level best to see them live when next they
tour. I will also need more listens to get a grasp on the
lyrics. Aside from a couple lines that were overly saccharine or old hat
nothing stood out as particularly poor nor was there much I can point to as
immediately grabbing me. Finally, I
would like to add that I did not like Achtung
Baby when I first bought back in the great fall of 91’. So there is still a glimmer of hope here,
that’s gotta count for something!
I’ll even end on the most positive
note of all and say I think I’ll go give 2009’s No Line on the Horizon another
listen because it seems pretty great right now!
