HelloAngel
ONE love, blood, life
We love ...U2's sonic gold
THE biggest event this November was the US presidential election. Yes, it's been the most interesting such contest in quite a while, but for millions of people on every continent it is the promise of a new U2 album which has cloaked this month in an anticipatory aura.
On November 22 How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb will be released, and within minutes its lyrics will be the subject of Shakespearean levels of literary criticism on internet sites.
It's four years - an Olympic wait - since the Irish band last brought out a full CD's worth of new songs. If releases are staggered to starve fans into excitement, this is a tactic which works.
There was a three-year gap between All That You Can't Leave Behind and the puzzling Pop, which came four years after the fin de siecle sounds of Zooropa. During these long periods, children can be conceived, born and sent into education, and U2's salvos of songs are listened to, interpreted and discussed into the early hours.
Few bands enjoy such a trusted relationship with their fans. Even if an album is a "grower" and needs months of listening before its subterranean levels of sound and literary allusions can be mined, by the time tour comes around these listeners will feel content they possess sonic gold.
Buying the latest album is what it must have been like for the first readers of the Lord of the Rings saga when a new epic appeared on shelves. U2 fans this month have the pleasure of finding where a band once known as the conscience on eight legs have journeyed artistically, spiritually and politically.
A close reading of the lyrics and watching of the videos would also reveal an admiration for Wim Wenders's film about angels in Berlin, Wings of Desire. Other cultural icons whose fingerprints are found in the U2 canon include authors Salman Rushdie and Raymond Carver, and New York graduate of The Velvet Underground, Lou Reed. Being an ardent U2 fan is thus a bit like enrolling on a correspondence course designed to take the student on a ride through civilisation's most glittering moments, in which no distinction is drawn between old or new or low or high art.
Although they remain one of the three most recognisable bands on this planet, somehow U2 have not been ensnared in the bonds of celebrity. Bassist Adam Clayton's brief romance with model Naomi Campbell was well-documented by the tabloids, but since then the four men seem quite untroubled by paparazzi.
Edge, the guitarist, has been left alone to invent new sounds, and the details of the private life of drummer Larry Mullen are better hidden than a leprechaun's proverbial pot.
Bono's campaigning for justice in Africa has been so effective and relentless he can seem more of an radical advocate than a recording artist, but his speech at the last Labour party conference shocked the political class with its understated passion.
As ambassadors for modern Ireland, they emerged from a society plagued by a sense of inferiority to England and bedeviled with mediocre politicians and the spectre of terrorism. Somehow they did not become The Chieftains with louder amps, but forged a vision of an Ireland where faith was not a prison but a prism through which to gaze, and where diversity did not mean dilution.
Their journey is far from finished. At a time when the static on the radio is more interesting than many of the tunes, it's a cause for joy we can look forward to the return of the kings.
--David Williamson, Western Mail
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100...50082&headline=u2-s-sonic-gold-name_page.html
THE biggest event this November was the US presidential election. Yes, it's been the most interesting such contest in quite a while, but for millions of people on every continent it is the promise of a new U2 album which has cloaked this month in an anticipatory aura.
On November 22 How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb will be released, and within minutes its lyrics will be the subject of Shakespearean levels of literary criticism on internet sites.
It's four years - an Olympic wait - since the Irish band last brought out a full CD's worth of new songs. If releases are staggered to starve fans into excitement, this is a tactic which works.
There was a three-year gap between All That You Can't Leave Behind and the puzzling Pop, which came four years after the fin de siecle sounds of Zooropa. During these long periods, children can be conceived, born and sent into education, and U2's salvos of songs are listened to, interpreted and discussed into the early hours.
Few bands enjoy such a trusted relationship with their fans. Even if an album is a "grower" and needs months of listening before its subterranean levels of sound and literary allusions can be mined, by the time tour comes around these listeners will feel content they possess sonic gold.
Buying the latest album is what it must have been like for the first readers of the Lord of the Rings saga when a new epic appeared on shelves. U2 fans this month have the pleasure of finding where a band once known as the conscience on eight legs have journeyed artistically, spiritually and politically.
A close reading of the lyrics and watching of the videos would also reveal an admiration for Wim Wenders's film about angels in Berlin, Wings of Desire. Other cultural icons whose fingerprints are found in the U2 canon include authors Salman Rushdie and Raymond Carver, and New York graduate of The Velvet Underground, Lou Reed. Being an ardent U2 fan is thus a bit like enrolling on a correspondence course designed to take the student on a ride through civilisation's most glittering moments, in which no distinction is drawn between old or new or low or high art.
Although they remain one of the three most recognisable bands on this planet, somehow U2 have not been ensnared in the bonds of celebrity. Bassist Adam Clayton's brief romance with model Naomi Campbell was well-documented by the tabloids, but since then the four men seem quite untroubled by paparazzi.
Edge, the guitarist, has been left alone to invent new sounds, and the details of the private life of drummer Larry Mullen are better hidden than a leprechaun's proverbial pot.
Bono's campaigning for justice in Africa has been so effective and relentless he can seem more of an radical advocate than a recording artist, but his speech at the last Labour party conference shocked the political class with its understated passion.
As ambassadors for modern Ireland, they emerged from a society plagued by a sense of inferiority to England and bedeviled with mediocre politicians and the spectre of terrorism. Somehow they did not become The Chieftains with louder amps, but forged a vision of an Ireland where faith was not a prison but a prism through which to gaze, and where diversity did not mean dilution.
Their journey is far from finished. At a time when the static on the radio is more interesting than many of the tunes, it's a cause for joy we can look forward to the return of the kings.
--David Williamson, Western Mail
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100...50082&headline=u2-s-sonic-gold-name_page.html
