I half agree. U2 needs to start reaching into deeper places. NLOTH had some of those fantastic moment but the record was bogged down by half of the songs not really fitting with the mood of the other half. One half was some of the greatest stuff U2 has written and the other half was OK/ bordering on cheesy. If there was more consistency to the album, it would have been a classic.
Herein lies the problem- during POP, U2 was dark, intense, unpredictable. During ATYCLB and HTDAAB, U2 had about 5 fantastic songs, but both albums were bogged down by so many average and predictable songs to contrast the great ones. What makes Achtung and Joshua great albums is how cohesive, connected, and consistent they are. Even if you have great songs, the all have to make a complete whole that FEELS right- this is the problem since PoP. I am not going to say every song on PoP is amazing, (80% of the album is) but 100% of the album had a cohesive dark FEEL to it that connected everything. U2 needs to stop trying to be overly inspirational because it can come off as cheesey, and they need to stop trying to be so relevant, and go back to creating emotions through music, not popularity through music. If their albums are great, they will gain more notoriety. And if they are not relevantly popular or mainstream anymore, who cares as long as they are creating good music?!
So in a way, I understand Corbie's statement, but I have a lot more hope in U2 than he does. When U2 is good, they are the best. They just need to go back to making albums with a cohesive feel, that is consistently innovative and amazing. They have done it before and with part of NLOTH I have hope that they can do it again.
I'm not so big into cohesiveness. If it's has many great songs, that's what's important to me. Achtung Baby and Joshua Tree are so great because they have so many great songs, regardless of their context. U2 since, frankly, Zooropa hasn't made enough good songs; Zooropa is mostly b-sides, since it was intended as an EP (I'm guessing of Numb, Lemon, and Stay). On Pop, The Edge didn't push himself enough; Mofo and Do You Feel Loved are great, but "Miami" could have been great if Edge had come up with a better guitar melody or something.
Worst of all, since 2000, the band has abandoned not only interesting guitar sounds, but a sense of loud and soft to create texture and subtlety; it's all over JT and AB, but nowhere to be found in the last decade. That's a serious failure. It's like U2 would rather be heard on the speakers at McDonalds with those other cheesy pop country songs and John Mayer than make great music.
This song is the epitome of popular crap I can't stand, but lame secretaries and unsophisticated American Idol watchers love:
YouTube - Daniel Powter - Bad Day (Video) (I literally never knew who this song was by until now; I'm surprised the guy looks so young.)