I am here to eat NLOTH crow.....

[WaltDisney]

well, the album has had the opposite effect on me. I can't actually listen to the whole thing without getting bored. I think many of you are working too hard to like it "once I left all expectations, baggage, what I deem cool or cool or uncool at the door I fell in love with this album!$!?&!"

To me, that just sounds like forced will. You have expectations because it's U2 and because they talked the talked in the pre-hype. If it doesn't deliver then it's not good enough. I had massive expectations for In Rainbows and it delivered without me having to forget or do anything.

This album is dissapointing, it is safe and uninspired. Songs of ascent will hopefully be more on the line.

 

[Niceman]

well, the album has had the opposite effect on me. I can't actually listen to the whole thing without getting bored. I think many of you are working too hard to like it "once I left all expectations, baggage, what I deem cool or cool or uncool at the door I fell in love with this album!$!?&!"

To me, that just sounds like forced will. You have expectations because it's U2 and because they talked the talked in the pre-hype. If it doesn't deliver then it's not good enough. I had massive expectations for In Rainbows and it delivered without me having to forget or do anything.

This album is dissapointing, it is safe and uninspired. Songs of ascent will hopefully be more on the line.

Seriously, THIS bores you, but you find In Rainbows interesting? I think you and I may be exactly diametrically opposed!

 

[WaltDisney]

Comparing In Rainbows to No Line on the Horizon is like comparing Daddy Day Care to the Godfather. It's in a different stratosphere... Sorry, but it's scientific fact

 

[Niceman]

Comparing In Rainbows to No Line on the Horizon is like comparing Daddy Day Care to the Godfather. It's in a different stratosphere... Sorry, but it's scientific fact

I agree entirely! But I would equate the actually experimental work (NLOTH) to the Godfather and the hum-drum repetition of the exact same sound as their last four albums (In Rainbows) to Daddy Day Care..... I apologize, but this information has been cross-checked by my team of crack scientists........

 

[ozeeko]

I agree entirely! But I would equate the actually experimental work (NLOTH) to the Godfather and the hum-drum repetition of the exact same sound as their last four albums (In Rainbows) to Daddy Day Care..... I apologize, but this information has been cross-checked by my team of crack scientists........

With all due respect, i don't see how In Rainbows is the exact same sound as their last four albums. In Rainbows is Radiohead in minimalist mode, trashing most of the electronics that decorated Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief. Kid A and Amnesiac are similar...you'd have a point there, but they're admittedly sister albums, all songs recorded during the same sessions. Hailto the Thief was the product of using all the Kid A experiments and filtering it thru a more pronounced rock direction, whereas In Rainbows is in my opinion the most organic album they've released. It's a collection of expertly written melodic songs.

I do disagree with WaltDisney on NLOTH being a safe album. I think there are way more interesting detours than retreads. WAS, COL, MOS, F-BB,NLOTH and Magnificent are all top notch u2 songs that i love without forced will.

 

[Niceman]

With all due respect, i don't see how In Rainbows is the exact same sound as their last four albums. In Rainbows is Radiohead in minimalist mode, trashing most of the electronics that decorated Kid A, Amnesiac and Hail to the Thief. Kid A and Amnesiac are similar...you'd have a point there, but they're admittedly sister albums, all songs recorded during the same sessions. Hailto the Thief was the product of using all the Kid A experiments and filtering it thru a more pronounced rock direction, whereas In Rainbows is in my opinion the most organic album they've released. It's a collection of expertly written melodic songs.

I do disagree with WaltDisney on NLOTH being a safe album. I think there are way more interesting detours than retreads. WAS, COL, MOS, F-BB,NLOTH and Magnificent are all top notch u2 songs that i love without forced will.

Hey, that's cool that we're hearing different things. Glad you enjoyed In Rainbows. Radiohead IS a good band. I bought In Rainbows, played it and when it was done realized I couldn't remember any of the songs. I tried it again, and the same thing happened. It keeps happening! Deeply forgettable album, and I don't see any difference between its sound and what they've been doing since Kid A. I liked Kid A, but damn, how many times are they going to re-record it? Because that's what i feel like they're doing.... I prefer a band that genuinely challenges themselves: U2. Radiohead has been coloring by numbers for a decade now and that really disapoints me....

 

[ozeeko]

Hey, that's cool that we're hearing different things. Glad you enjoyed In Rainbows. Radiohead IS a good band. I bought In Rainbows, played it and when it was done realized I couldn't remember any of the songs. I tried it again, and the same things happened. It keeps happening! Deeply forgettable album, and I don't see any difference between its sound and what they've been doing since Kid A. I liked Kid A, but damn, how many times are they going to re-record it? Because that's what i feel like they're doing.... I prefer a band that genuinely challenges themselves: U2. Radiohead has been coloring by numbers for a decade now and that really disapoints me....

Kid A is the most radical sounding album in their repertoir. It's a mood setting album and definitely lacks any real standout song. It's pretty short on traditional sounding songs in the first place. I'd say Optimistic is probably the one song that sounds ready for radio.

I don't understand how In Rainbows is just another rerecording of Kid A. In Rainbows clearly has written songs on it, songs you can sing along to and play on your guitar, Kid A is like a long continuous epic mood piece.

I'm just curious as to why you think the albums are so similar. The only similarity i can see is the usage of electronic sounding drums on a couple tracks (15 steps, All I Need). Besides that tho, there isn't much noodling with keyboards, it's all pretty normal sounding stuff, guitars bass and drums with clear audible vocals, where as on Kid A you had tons of layers and only a few tracks where you hear Thom Yorke's vocals left untweaked.

 

[Niceman]

Kid A is the most radical sounding album in their repertoir. It's a mood setting album and definitely lacks any real standout song. It's pretty short on traditional sounding songs in the first place. I'd say Optimistic is probably the one song that sounds ready for radio.

I don't understand how In Rainbows is just another rerecording of Kid A. In Rainbows clearly has written songs on it, songs you can sing along to and play on your guitar, Kid A is like a long continuous epic mood piece.

I'm just curious as to why you think the albums are so similar. The only similarity i can see is the usage of electronic sounding drums on a couple tracks (15 steps, All I Need). Besides that tho, there isn't much noodling with keyboards, it's all pretty normal sounding stuff, guitars bass and drums with clear audible vocals, where as on Kid A you had tons of layers and only a few tracks where you hear Thom Yorke's vocals left untweaked.

Well, I think we're getting pretty far off topic; but to answer the question:

I also think Kid A was brilliant. I Do think there were stand out tracks. Not as sing-able as their previous work, but certainly memorable songs. A couple even rocked!

Amnesiac I was not a fan of. It was the left-overs from Kid A. In fact, my girlfriend downloaded a copy of it right after Kid A came out!

I liked Hail to the Thief, but I think that it was a continuation of the the Kid A sound. Whatever changes there were were very minor. You might compare it to Green day's American Idiot. I actually think Radiohead is a better band than Green day, but Green Day managed to create an album that essentially said the same thing that Radiohead said on Hail to the Thief, all the while massively growing as a band - while radiohead was standing still.

Ok. No problem really yet, but when In Rainbows came out there was that same sound mixed with, well, I should find a more diplomatic way to say this, but to be frank the album REALLY bores me. It goes in one ear and out the other. It's pleasant? But that's all I can say. It's kind of strange how I can have listened to it multiple times and LITERALLY not remember a single sound, a single, idea a single memorable sound. It sounded like the same sound they've sold to me four times now - but entirely forgettable..

.....To me!
But I'm genuinely glad you're getting more out of what appears to me to be an artistically stagnant band than I am.

I think that Radiohead has done the equivalent of if U2 recorded Passengers and then just sounded like that for the rest of their career.

 

[ndmaxfield]

I agree entirely! But I would equate the actually experimental work (NLOTH) to the Godfather and the hum-drum repetition of the exact same sound as their last four albums (In Rainbows) to Daddy Day Care..... I apologize, but this information has been cross-checked by my team of crack scientists........

In Rainbows is no more innovative than NLOTH. I do think that U2 borrowed Radiohead's formula of taking what sounds like a mainstream-sounding song and tagging a twist onto the ending (e.g., Weird Fishes), or vice-versa (e.g., Jigsaw). But this can be overdone IMO, to the point that it's hum-drum (safe) to keep doing it that way, even if a song would sound better as a middle-of-the-road, radio-friendly rocker or ballad. Radiohead almost dared to write some mainstream songs but didn't ultimately do it. They don't easily or often rise back out of experimental into mainstream fully for individual songs; U2 nicely has one foot on either side of that line with NLOTH (maybe that's the meaning behind the title of the album).

 

[ultraviolet353]

Comparing In Rainbows to No Line on the Horizon is like comparing Daddy Day Care to the Godfather. It's in a different stratosphere... Sorry, but it's scientific fact

While U2 is still my favorite band--I have to agree with this statement. I will even go as far as saying that In Rainbows is the album of the decade. I do like the NLOTH, but it definitely falls short if my expectations (ranked below AB, Zoo, Pop (my favorite), and ATYCLB--not sure how I feel vis a vis Bomb yet, although I think Bomb has 3 songs that are better than anything on NLOTH: MD, SYCMIYO, and OOTS) --I was hoping for a more challenging record sonically. I think NLOTH's weakness is that it is neither sonically challenging nor melodically brilliant--that is not to say there aren;t glimpses of either, but not enough in a sustained manner for me--

 

[ozeeko]

Well, I think we're getting pretty far off topic; but to answer the question:

I also think Kid A was brilliant. I Do think there were stand out tracks. Not as sing-able as their previous work, but certainly memorable songs. A couple even rocked!

Amnesiac I was not a fan of. It was the left-overs from Kid A. In fact, my girlfriend downloaded a copy of it right after Kid A came out!

I liked Hail to the Thief, but I think that it was a continuation of the the Kid A sound. Whatever changes there were were very minor. You might compare it to Green day's American Idiot. I actually think Radiohead is a better band than Green day, but Green Day managed to create an album that essentially said the same thing that Radiohead said on Hail to the Thief, all the while massively growing as a band - while radiohead was standing still.

Ok. No problem really yet, but when In Rainbows came out there was that same sound mixed with, well, I should find a more diplomatic way to say this, but to be frank the album REALLY bores me. It goes in one ear and out the other. It's pleasant? But that's all I can say. It's kind of strange how I can have listened to it multiple times and LITERALLY not remember a single sound, a single, idea a single memorable sound. It sounded like the same sound they've sold to me four times now - but entirely forgettable..

.....To me!
But I'm genuinely glad you're getting more out of what appears to me to be an artistically stagnant band than I am.

I think that Radiohead has done the equivalent of if U2 recorded Passengers and then just sounded like that for the rest of their career.

Fair enough, different strokes for different folks.

Although I can't sign on to the Green Day appreciation. In my opinion they've gone downhill fast ever since the follow up to Dookie. I think their political lyrics won people over more than the songs (which IMO were pretty lame), and let's face it, it wasn't really that punk to write songs about the Bush Administration, Cuz, well, EVERYONE was doing it. But whatever.

I like NLOTH and In Rainbows. Hopefully SOA will be the next bold step.

 

[Niceman]

Fair enough, different strokes for different folks.

Although I can't sign on to the Green Day appreciation. In my opinion they've gone downhill fast ever since the follow up to Dookie. I think their political lyrics won people over more than the songs (which IMO were pretty lame), and let's face it, it wasn't really that punk to write songs about the Bush Administration, Cuz, well, EVERYONE was doing it. But whatever.

I like NLOTH and In Rainbows. Hopefully SOA will be the next bold step.

I've actually never had much interest in Green Day before American Idiot, well not enough to spend money on them. And no, the political lyrics had nothing to do with why. I think they leapt up to a much higher level of song writing. I found the new songs stuck in my head....

Listening to In Rainbows again right now. I SOOOOOOO want to eat crow on this one, but its still just forgettable mumbly background music to me...

But we can agree on our hopes for Songs of Ascent being fantastic!

 

[ozeeko]

But we can agree on our hopes for Songs of Ascent being fantastic!

The fact that they're already speaking bluntly about the album instead of the usual "were going back into the studio ASAP" jive is keeping me optimistic. Yes. Zooropa for the next generation (not literally, but u know what i mean)

 

[Niceman]

The fact that they're already speaking bluntly about the album instead of the usual "were going back into the studio ASAP" jive is keeping me optimistic. Yes. Zooropa for the next generation (not literally, but u know what i mean)

Exactly, an album title and a first single= they mean it!!!

 

[Morgoth321]

Getting back on topic and away from Radiohead(!), I think that NLOTH is dividing opinion and being such a fertile area for discussion because it's an ALBUM. By that I mean that it's best appreciated as a unified suite of songs, to be listened to in its entirety wherever possible. Enjoyable as they were, ATYCLB and HTDAAB were overproduced and safe / risk-averse, full of radio friendly choruses and vague lyrics. For me, that's why GOYB sticks out so much on the new album, because it's the only song that comes across as an attempt to be a hit single. Now, I suspect that earlier mixes of the NLOTH songs may have been more adventurous in their production and have been watered down since, but generally, NLOTH is a complex album that rewards your full attention and the wearing of headphones.

But, how many potential singles are there really on NLOTH? There's nothing radio pluggers hate more than long songs with lengthy instrumental intros (Magnificent, anyone?). Radio pluggers love short songs that hit their choruses about thirty seconds in and end after three minutes or so. For this new album, U2 rightfully don't seem to give a damn about pandering too much to this sort of market any more. If, say, Unknown Caller was released as a single, I can imagine radio stations chopping off the first minute or so, and then cutting into a vapid jingle or Jonas Brothers 'song' just before Edge's superb solo. The vocals don't start properly until nearly two minutes in! Much as I don't like the song that much, I think it's a brave indication of U2's direction for NLOTH.

Some more thoughts on Moment of Surrender that I forgot to mention in my earlier post. Has Bono ever sung better? At this stage of his career, in his late 40s and with all sorts of well-publicised / discussed vocal issues, for him to be able to sing with such power and raw passion is wonderful. I was listening to the song recently while driving, and nearly had to stop the car because I started welling up. I don't usually get affected like that, so it's a pretty special song.

 

[mellow moog]

well, the album has had the opposite effect on me. I can't actually listen to the whole thing without getting bored. I think many of you are working too hard to like it "once I left all expectations, baggage, what I deem cool or cool or uncool at the door I fell in love with this album!$!?&!"

To me, that just sounds like forced will. You have expectations because it's U2 and because they talked the talked in the pre-hype. If it doesn't deliver then it's not good enough. I had massive expectations for In Rainbows and it delivered without me having to forget or do anything.

This album is dissapointing, it is safe and uninspired. Songs of ascent will hopefully be more on the line.

It sounds like to me you are expecting U2 to create a new aural landscape that has never been explored before so who's carrying baggage then??? Think about that one. Safe and uninspired???
I loved Radiohead from Pablo Honey when it came out to Kid A but they then deliberately went about creating avant garde songs for the sake of it, destroying their own melancholy melody along the way(that sound was very unique to them)
The fact that U2 delayed the release of this album until they were sure they were happy with it proves, whether you believe it or not, that they are trying to create the best album they can and not play safe.

 

[U2girl]

Pass some of that crow.

It's not true NLOTH isn't trying anything new: MOS is the kind of 21st century gospel song they haven't done yet. And WAS with spaghetti-western guitar and french horn ? Also "let me in the sound" part of Boots.

 

[mikal]

Pass some of that crow.

It's not true NLOTH isn't trying anything new: MOS is the kind of 21st century gospel song they haven't done yet. And WAS with spaghetti-western guitar and french horn ? Also "let me in the sound" part of Boots.

 

[phillyfan26]

Apparently it's impossible to enjoy both No Line on the Horizon and In Rainbows. I break the laws of the universe in enjoying them both.

In Rainbows is one of my favorite albums ever, just phenomenal in its emotion and simplicity. No Line on the Horizon isn't there for me yet.

 

[Addicted To Bad]

NLOTH is the only U2 album I´ve listened so many times without skipping a song I gave it an 8 at the beginning

I was wrong - It´s a masterpice for sure!

 

[MMP]

Apparently it's impossible to enjoy both No Line on the Horizon and In Rainbows. I break the laws of the universe in enjoying them both.

Same here... I enjoy both.

 

[allcub]

NLOTH is the only U2 album I´ve listened so many times without skipping a song I gave it an 8 at the beginning

I was wrong - It´s a masterpice for sure!

And while on the subject of humble pie I hope many that dissed SUC will eventually "get" this song - I think think it's FECKIN amazing! Every time I hear it I can just imagine..........."COME ON YE PEOPLE!!!!!!!!" blaring out of the radio.

 

[juanacate]

I never hated the new album. I love all their work, I just thought the songs wouldn't be remembered as classics in the years to come... but now I'm beginning to doubt myself... let's keep hoping I'm wrong...

I liked Get On Your Boots the first time I heard it, by the way.

 

[Fullonedge3]

And for those that think SUC is truly weak, what would you rather have as track 7? SUC or Wild Honey? I think the answer's obvious, even though I do enjoy Wild Honey.

 

[standrums]

This is U2's most spiritual and uplifting album to date. To me it evokes the spirit of October and UF but in a 2009 context. The more I listen to it the more it resonates with and takes me to another place.

This tour is going to be mind blowing too, mark my words - when the dust settles and we get to see tour DVD's and listen to live bootlegs in the future I truly believe history will be very kind to this moment in U2's evolution.

We're living through a great moment in the band's life, one that addresses the issues that are relevant to the times we are living in today.

What more can I ask for? This is magnificent

 

[BrownEyedBoy]

Looks like we've got ourselves a grower, folks.

I have to agree with whoever said this album sounds amazing at around 3 am in the morning. I heard MOS at that time and was taken back at how beautiful it sounded. I decided to put the entire album on and it's been on since.

I am fascinated with the french horn (or whatever that is) in White as Snow. Kind of reminded of Ground Beneath Her Feet. Anyway, thank God. I am relieved that this is a grower. I find myself enjoying it more and more through every listen.

 

[doctorwho]

Apparently it's impossible to enjoy both No Line on the Horizon and In Rainbows. I break the laws of the universe in enjoying them both.

In Rainbows is one of my favorite albums ever, just phenomenal in its emotion and simplicity. No Line on the Horizon isn't there for me yet.

While I haven't listened to "In Rainbows" a lot (and some Radiohead fans don't like it), I found it quite enjoyable. Maybe it's because I found it a bit more accessible, while I find a lot of Radiohead just a bit too out there for my taste (Eno probably adores them).

So put me in the group breaking the laws of the universe as enjoying both albums.

 

[Vlad n U 2]

Looks like we've got ourselves a grower, folks.

I have to agree with whoever said this album sounds amazing at around 3 am in the morning. I heard MOS at that time and was taken back at how beautiful it sounded. I decided to put the entire album on and it's been on since.

I am fascinated with the french horn (or whatever that is) in White as Snow. Kind of reminded of Ground Beneath Her Feet. Anyway, thank God. I am relieved that this is a grower. I find myself enjoying it more and more through every listen.

Were you one of the people that really hated it before? Wow, good that this album can turn bad opinions around.