Just to comment on some thoughts and ideas:
"designed for the radio, 2004 album" - only if you hear 11 Vertigos. Nothing on the radio sounded like 80's U2 at the time.
"Nothing on ATYCLB is experimental" - not in the 90's U2 sense maybe, but they've never tried a pop album before (and similarly, they never did a retro album before Bomb).
"they took less time before" - true, maybe due to getting better at the craft of writing (and being inspired - it's great when it happens but not every album will be JT and not every song will be One). That said, now we get to hear every bit of studio progress news, the beach clips, the progress of songs.
Streets took about half of the entire 6 months of JT sessions. We know that Lillywhite had to work on Wild horses for a full month (album itself only really came together in the last two or three months before release). Who knows what else took a lot of time then, but we don't know about it because we don't have the insight of the current age, thanks to the internet ? You may say "Bono's actism slows them down" but why was NLOTH the longest wait (he spent more time in the studio compared to Behind and Bomb) ?
Looking at the last few albums though -- switching producers for Pop and Bomb, delaying Pop and NLOTH (and kind-of Bomb even if the October 2003 date Bono and Edge pushed for was never official), re-starting the sessions for ATYCLB (according to an atu2 article), abandoning Rubin sessions in 2006...I doubt there were divisions in the band for all of the above (in fact it was only reported for Bomb). Is it too much perfectionism ? Doesn't account for the strongly rumoured 2010 release for SOA. You can say they're scared of Pop/mart part II, but that went away with ATYCLB and Bomb. They're touring an album like NLOTH on stadiums, that's gutsy as far as I'm concerned.
"designed for the radio, 2004 album" - only if you hear 11 Vertigos. Nothing on the radio sounded like 80's U2 at the time.
"Nothing on ATYCLB is experimental" - not in the 90's U2 sense maybe, but they've never tried a pop album before (and similarly, they never did a retro album before Bomb).
"they took less time before" - true, maybe due to getting better at the craft of writing (and being inspired - it's great when it happens but not every album will be JT and not every song will be One). That said, now we get to hear every bit of studio progress news, the beach clips, the progress of songs.
Streets took about half of the entire 6 months of JT sessions. We know that Lillywhite had to work on Wild horses for a full month (album itself only really came together in the last two or three months before release). Who knows what else took a lot of time then, but we don't know about it because we don't have the insight of the current age, thanks to the internet ? You may say "Bono's actism slows them down" but why was NLOTH the longest wait (he spent more time in the studio compared to Behind and Bomb) ?
Looking at the last few albums though -- switching producers for Pop and Bomb, delaying Pop and NLOTH (and kind-of Bomb even if the October 2003 date Bono and Edge pushed for was never official), re-starting the sessions for ATYCLB (according to an atu2 article), abandoning Rubin sessions in 2006...I doubt there were divisions in the band for all of the above (in fact it was only reported for Bomb). Is it too much perfectionism ? Doesn't account for the strongly rumoured 2010 release for SOA. You can say they're scared of Pop/mart part II, but that went away with ATYCLB and Bomb. They're touring an album like NLOTH on stadiums, that's gutsy as far as I'm concerned.
