namkcuR
ONE love, blood, life
As is to be expect, the release of a new U2 album inspires me to listen to the back catalog in large amounts again. Upon listening to a few tracks off ATYCLB again, I have a few thoughts about this record.
1. For all the flack some us give U2's pre-NLOTH output this decade, I've always, with the exception of the months immediately following the release of Bomb, felt that ATYCLB was a better record, a warmer, more natural feeling record, a record that, despite a certain back-to-basics, familiar sound, housed some songs that sounded little like anything U2 had done before it(Stuck In A Moment, In A Little While, Wild Honey, When I Look At The World) in addition to songs that sounded "like U2"(Beautiful Day, Elevation, Walk On, Kite, New York), something that I don't think can be said of Bomb.
2. I'm not sure Kite is appreciated enough in these parts. If I had to pick one song on ATYCLB other than Beautiful Day that I thought was a genuinely great song as good as anything they've ever done, it would be Kite. Especially the 2006 live performance on the Window In The Skies single. I don't usually like to make potentially divisive hyperbolic statements about anything, much less something as subjective as music, but I think I will here: If you don't like that 2006 WITS live version of Kite, you don't like U2. That extended solo, one of the better vocal performances I've heard Bono give for this song...it's just
3. In a recent interview, Adam Clayton stated that Brian Eno thought U2 were "mad" for leaving Winter off NLOTH(Discuss that song in WTAHAN please). In this vein, I think U2 were mad for leaving The Ground Beneath Her Feet off ATYCLB. I think Stateless is brilliant too but I can sort of understand how U2 would feel that it didn't jive with the "pop" album they were trying to make. But The Ground Beneath Her Feet isn't that heavy...I mean, it's heavy, but still catchy enough to get people singing along to it. It's still a pop song. Replace Grace(a song that is, imo, unfairly maligned here, but that still doesn't hold a candle to TGBHF) with The Ground Beneath Her Feet, and I genuinely believe that a lot of people would view ATYCLB differently as a whole.
4. In A Little While is catchy as hell. Especially live. The way they ended it when they played it live on the Elevation Tour, with Edge singing alone "Slow down my beating heart/slowly love/slowly love", is really, really catchy, imo. After listening to the performance on the Elevation Boston DVD, I always find myself singing that last part to myself. That and "A man dreams one day to fly/a man takes a rocket ship into the sky/he lives on a star that's dying in the night/he follows in the trail, the scatter of light" - one of my favorite U2 lyrics of the decade.
5. When I Look At The World is gorgeous and is perhaps the most underappreciated U2 song of the decade.
That's all for now.
1. For all the flack some us give U2's pre-NLOTH output this decade, I've always, with the exception of the months immediately following the release of Bomb, felt that ATYCLB was a better record, a warmer, more natural feeling record, a record that, despite a certain back-to-basics, familiar sound, housed some songs that sounded little like anything U2 had done before it(Stuck In A Moment, In A Little While, Wild Honey, When I Look At The World) in addition to songs that sounded "like U2"(Beautiful Day, Elevation, Walk On, Kite, New York), something that I don't think can be said of Bomb.
2. I'm not sure Kite is appreciated enough in these parts. If I had to pick one song on ATYCLB other than Beautiful Day that I thought was a genuinely great song as good as anything they've ever done, it would be Kite. Especially the 2006 live performance on the Window In The Skies single. I don't usually like to make potentially divisive hyperbolic statements about anything, much less something as subjective as music, but I think I will here: If you don't like that 2006 WITS live version of Kite, you don't like U2. That extended solo, one of the better vocal performances I've heard Bono give for this song...it's just
3. In a recent interview, Adam Clayton stated that Brian Eno thought U2 were "mad" for leaving Winter off NLOTH(Discuss that song in WTAHAN please). In this vein, I think U2 were mad for leaving The Ground Beneath Her Feet off ATYCLB. I think Stateless is brilliant too but I can sort of understand how U2 would feel that it didn't jive with the "pop" album they were trying to make. But The Ground Beneath Her Feet isn't that heavy...I mean, it's heavy, but still catchy enough to get people singing along to it. It's still a pop song. Replace Grace(a song that is, imo, unfairly maligned here, but that still doesn't hold a candle to TGBHF) with The Ground Beneath Her Feet, and I genuinely believe that a lot of people would view ATYCLB differently as a whole.
4. In A Little While is catchy as hell. Especially live. The way they ended it when they played it live on the Elevation Tour, with Edge singing alone "Slow down my beating heart/slowly love/slowly love", is really, really catchy, imo. After listening to the performance on the Elevation Boston DVD, I always find myself singing that last part to myself. That and "A man dreams one day to fly/a man takes a rocket ship into the sky/he lives on a star that's dying in the night/he follows in the trail, the scatter of light" - one of my favorite U2 lyrics of the decade.
5. When I Look At The World is gorgeous and is perhaps the most underappreciated U2 song of the decade.
That's all for now.
