Short of a masterpiece

[jamaral]

people just listen to it in windows media player with speed settings at 1,1 and then say what you think about it and if it isn't sounding better and what that means about the album produting team. I realy like it better a litle bit acelerated but maybe i am just looking for an excuse to like it

 

[U2girl]

"3rd masterpiece" won't happen without a more thorough reinvention and that complete "oomph" mood/experience JT and AB have (NLOTH comes fairly close in this but songs 5-7, plus some weak Bono lyrics, keep it from that top level).

 

[SpaceBoy]

"3rd masterpiece" won't happen without a more thorough reinvention and that complete "oomph" mood/experience JT and AB have (NLOTH comes fairly close in this but songs 5-7, plus some weak Bono lyrics, keep it from that top level).

 

[monsieur fly]

I love Boots- it's fun, ironic and sounds like Queen in their pomp

 

[PowerSurge]

Put Mercy after Fez - Being Born, and it's a masterpiece.

put the first half of J-Tree after NLOTH, followed by the first half of Achtung Baby after Magnificent and it's a masterpiece.

 

[zwervers2]

"3rd masterpiece" won't happen without a more thorough reinvention and that complete "oomph" mood/experience JT and AB have (NLOTH comes fairly close in this but songs 5-7, plus some weak Bono lyrics, keep it from that top level).

You just do not get the album yet U2girl. Stop trying to tell everyone something as fact. This is what I have been told all the time.
Apparantely it IS a masterpiece but allthough we love the record we don't seem to get the idea. I have been told that it might be even better than joshua tree and Achtung baby which both seem to have a lot of weak songs all of a sudden. what have I been thinkin all these years

 

[zwervers2]

I love Boots- it's fun, ironic and sounds like Queen in their pomp

yeah, you can hear the brilliance of Freddie really shining through in this classic

 

[IndyShade]

I'm genuinely trying to get into it, but so far, I think the whole album is lazy and weak. There are a few moments that stand out for me - mostly the chorus for Moment of Surrender, the backing vocals in the bridge of NLOTH, and the guitar solo on Unknown Caller. These are the only moments that really stick in my head when I'm not listening to the album. Any other moments that stand out do so because they either remind me of things they've already done (Caller is made up of sounds and parts pulled directly from Walk On and Electrical Storm) or because they just colossally misfire (Fez). I get what they were trying to do, here, and I think it is a "cohesive" album in the sense that the songs all share a similar sonic texture. But, it's still bland and sterile and packed with lyrical and musical U2 cliches (Edge: please try to come up with more than two sounds for an entire album) and it's not going to age well, let alone hold up to The Joshua Tree and Achtung baby in 10 years' time. If I'm wrong about that, I'll eat Edge's 375 hats. But, this album is getting the same kind of praise from critics and fans that POP did when it was initially released. And then came the backlash...

On a side note, I'm bothered by all this talk about Bono singing the whole album in third-person and not as himself. Magnificent is totally about him (and thematically identical to All Because Of You, right down Bono "not having a choice" but to sing for his fans) and Stand Up Comedy manages to shoehorn a short rock star into itself. Even Breathe has a line like

"We are people borne of sound
The songs are in our eyes
Gonna wear them like a crown"

It's these kinds of on-the-nose self-referential lyrics that yank me out of a number of recent U2 songs. Bono did the same thing with Kite. Up until the last verse at the end of the song, almost anybody can apply the lyrics to his or her own parent/child relationship. Then we get a line about "the last of the rock stars", and it's suddenly not about you and me anymore. Bono seems hellbent on throwing shit in that is 100% about his life as Bono, and I know nobody is going to agree with me, but I think it really hurts the songs. I can't relate to Bono's rock star life, and I long for the days when he really tried to tackle the big ideas without getting caught up in his own drama, and allowed me to interpret what his songs were about or to apply them to my own life.

 

[Earnie Shavers]

Bono seems hellbent on throwing shit in that is 100% about his life as Bono, and I know nobody is going to agree with me, but I think it really hurts the songs. I can't relate to Bono's rock star life, and I long for the days when he really tried to tackle the big ideas without getting caught up in his own drama, and allowed me to interpret what his songs were about or to apply them to my own life.

More of these ‘in character’ songs, less about-Bono songs. The lyrical high points on here are when he’s off the planet – and these are him at his best in 10 years - not singing out quotes about himself we’ve heard 2 dozen times in interviews.

Having said that, one thing he’s avoided – mostly – and I’d love to hear one day when it’s not so immediate, is the diary of Bono, the really smart and thoughtful guy, who is living this life. Not this Napoleon complex shit, but, the guy spends the 90s writing brilliant stories of light and dark and love and lust and all these competing ideas and temptations and feelings and their relationship to each other. Now he likes to say that he’s seen inside the sausage factory that runs the world, and it’s ugly, and he surely would at times feel quite the burden on his shoulders and take a lot of both the highs and lows and the motives behind them very personally. I just think that, from dealing with Presidents to orphan AIDS patients and everything in between, he must now have such a greater understanding or at least far more active intellectual buzz over human nature at its core. This is his turf. He owned this shit for 2 decades than pretty much just dropped it when it would have really gotten fascinating for him. We get a hint of it in some songs, but we’ve been at the same time for the most part in U2’s pop-writing and direct-lyric phase. I’m sure Bono is communicating all of this far better over a few drinks at 3am with his mates, and Id love to hear a U2 album that truly unleashes both the extreme joy and extreme anger that he surely feels on a daily basis.

In a sense it’s a real shame, because really no-one has ever been in his position before. He’s hinted at his own feelings sometimes, but drifted them up right up to the surface. Songs like Vertigo and Crumbs are supposed to express some of this and may be well liked in their own right, but they’re not communicating those feelings in the way, say, some of the Achtung songs do on a totally different (but not completely unrelated) topic. He probably feels like he can’t do it till he’s out of that game, but if he thinks he’s had dinner with the devil, I’d love to really hear about it. I’d love to hear that intellectual buzz put into lyrics, and I’d love to hear that extreme joy and extreme anger fed through Edge’s guitar.

Think about those very last lines on Cedars of Lebanon. He's definitely got it all in there. Hopefully we hear a lot more of it one day…

 

[Salome]

"3rd masterpiece" won't happen without a more thorough reinvention and that complete "oomph" mood/experience JT and AB have (NLOTH comes fairly close in this but songs 5-7, plus some weak Bono lyrics, keep it from that top level).

I understand what you're saying, but I really do feel
- that re-invention is the most overrated 'quality' available in music
- that the mood/experience is a completely personal thing, to me this album has more of it than anything since Unforgettable Fire
- I really don't see how songs 5-7 would be severely lacking
sure, they are different from the first 4 songs, but songs 8-11 also sound different from song 1-4
to me in a weird way it works

'masterpiece' will be decided outside of this forum
and I think it's hard for any U2 album to get masterpiece status as the parameters are hard to set
- reviews: the band has been around for so long that some outlets will give them a positive and some a negative review no matter what
- sales: well, the age of downloading just about killed that one
- grammies: umm ......
- general concensus: is really more determined by hit singles than by how great the album is

 

[ShipOfFools]

Why does everyone hate this song? I personally love it, and I think it fits perfectly on the album.

 

[Salome]

You just do not get the album yet U2girl. Stop trying to tell everyone something as fact. This is what I have been told all the time.
Apparantely it IS a masterpiece but allthough we love the record we don't seem to get the idea. I have been told that it might be even better than joshua tree and Achtung baby which both seem to have a lot of weak songs all of a sudden. what have I been thinkin all these years

would it hurt your opinion of Achtung Baby if I said I thought half the songs on it are quite mediocre?
no?
then why are you whining

 

[Slapnutz]

"3rd masterpiece" won't happen without a more thorough reinvention and that complete "oomph" mood/experience JT and AB have (NLOTH comes fairly close in this but songs 5-7, plus some weak Bono lyrics, keep it from that top level).

I agree. Absolutely. It's a great album but tracks like Crazy Tonight and Boots hold it back.

 

[Salome]

Why does everyone hate this song? I personally love it, and I think it fits perfectly on the album.

apparently the song will need to floor people live before they see the light

 

[mikeuk]

I agree. Absolutely. It's a great album but tracks like Crazy Tonight and Boots hold it back.

even the best albums by the Beatles had tracks viewed (even to this day) as lesser eg Yellow submarine. Now for me the test is how they deliver it live and the clip from Paris today on playing Breathe has already got me to rate that even more _ yes i know that questions the recording but hey this is U2. After around 12 listens this is a real album rather than collection of songs and (in parts) does take some getting used to but overall a familiar/ challenging/ frustrating/majestic bunch of tunes/songs _ and I for one am `loving it' Mike

 

[Yahweh]

U2 have to fight their fanbase's naustelgia and that will be the hardest thing for them to overcome. In the general publics eyes it will almost be impossible to beat the success of Joshua Tree and Actung Baby at the artistic level, whether rightly or wrongly. This happens to all bands especially bands of U2s age.

It is already happening to Radiohead with The Bends and OK Computer where people no matter what they do wont think those albums can be beat.

 

[LyricalDrug]

On a side note, I'm bothered by all this talk about Bono singing the whole album in third-person and not as himself. Magnificent is totally about him (and thematically identical to All Because Of You, right down Bono "not having a choice" but to sing for his fans) and Stand Up Comedy manages to shoehorn a short rock star into itself. Even Breathe has a line like

"We are people borne of sound
The songs are in our eyes
Gonna wear them like a crown"

It's these kinds of on-the-nose self-referential lyrics that yank me out of a number of recent U2 songs. Bono did the same thing with Kite. Up until the last verse at the end of the song, almost anybody can apply the lyrics to his or her own parent/child relationship. Then we get a line about "the last of the rock stars", and it's suddenly not about you and me anymore. Bono seems hellbent on throwing shit in that is 100% about his life as Bono, and I know nobody is going to agree with me, but I think it really hurts the songs. I can't relate to Bono's rock star life, and I long for the days when he really tried to tackle the big ideas without getting caught up in his own drama, and allowed me to interpret what his songs were about or to apply them to my own life.

This is a great point. Bono is my favorite singer but his inconsistency can be maddening. I don't like when he tries to address his critics in his lyrics ("beware of little men with big ideas", etc) and makes the song about him instead of keeping things universal. He's the all-time master of the bittersweet love song, and no one else in rock can juxtapose joy and heartache in the same song the way he can, when he's at the top of his game ("Moment of Surrender" for example), but sometimes it feels as though his lyrics could have used some more editing.

 

[popshopper]

I love the album but it essentially 3 sets of songs.

The first 4 make a very decent EP
Boots, Crazy and Stand Up are throwaway tracks individually I like all the songs (SUC is a bit of a misfire but the riff saves it from the lyrics and the sterile production) but having 3 throwaways in a row steals the emotion the album has built up to that point and it never really gets it back.

Fez, White as snow, Breathe and Cedars are all class tracks, but badly placed as the album builds up intensity until Crazy then Fez and White as Snow attempt to build it back up but are undercut by Breathe which although thematically pretty dark is too anthemic and again releases the built up tension, only for Cedars immediately wanting to get back there.

Personally I think they chickened out with the inclusion of Boots, Crazy and SUC, one of those tracks (probably boots although it's the weakest track on the album) should have made it at the expense of the other throwaways. It's almost as if they thought, we need some radio friendly pop songs in there, I'd rather they kept the tension throughout the album. The fact that Crazy and SUC were 2 of the tracks which were finished last indicates that the initial cancellation was an attempt to pop up the album.

Hell they could have reworked Mercy (it needed a lot of work, editing and problably a new chorus but some of the lyrics were there and the guitar riff and break was excellent) and Smile (a lovely melody which was unfinished) and replaced two of the throwaway tracks. Hell Levitate could also have been reworked and put in

 

[doctorwho]

I like GOYB! I'm glad it's on the album. The album needed a rocker that threw a nasty curve in the album.

When JT was released, I felt it too was a bit boring, with similar sounding songs. In some ways, NLOTH has that aspect. But just like with JT, there are a few songs on NLOTH that help break up the pace adding extra oomph to the album.

Is NLOTH a masterpiece? That's a subjective term that I won't decide. But it is a darn good album. And does an album have to be as good as your favorite to be a "masterpiece"? It can still be an outstanding album, even with flaws. All of U2's albums have tracks I really don't like - some more than others. But it's the ones that I do like that matter. And U2 keeps producing music I like - I likey a lot!