The Disciple
New Yorker
That last minute or so of that song... is among the best things they've ever done. Bono just pouring it all out there. I can SEE the video for this song in my head....
SOE 35 - it’s finally here, let the debate on how good/bad it is begin!
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That last minute or so of that song... is among the best things they've ever done. Bono just pouring it all out there. I can SEE the video for this song in my head....
Gonna Run 2 U
New Yorker
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kiwilad
Refugee
This must be U2's most orchestral and choral album. In some ways this is more towards what I was hoping to get from a Songs of Ascent.
Cheeky wee buggers, with their typically poor choice of singles throwing me off the scent.
Cheeky wee buggers, with their typically poor choice of singles throwing me off the scent.
kiwilad
Refugee
Headache, your review a few pages back was mighty.
Scorpionac
War Child
Love is Bigger Than Anything deals with a big idea, treats it as such (no subtlety)... and that idea is the power of love. Doesn't that sound corny, whether or not you like it? (Which I do, but I can totally see why others wouldn't.)
corianderstem
Blue Crack Distributor
I thought the same until someone found the Blake poem that referenced some of those names. Lightbulb moment!Corny lyrically is The Blackout - Fred, Ned, Jack, Zack.....I wish Bono didnt include these random rhyming names cause the rest of the track doesn't bother me
AshTS
The Fly
Love Is Bigger sounds like Bono wanting to believe in love and desperately wants his kids to as well
Gonna Run 2 U
New Yorker
This album really is kind of depressing when you think about it.
Its an epic, beautiful song. Perfectly executed imo.
The first line "the door is open to go through, if I could I would walk too, but the path is made by you" is absolutely beautiful. Bono telling his kids he's dying, he won't walk this path with them, it is there time now. Incredibly powerful.
I an loving all these reviews! I am finding it impossible to get my thoughts together in writing. I just love this album and don't want to stop listening. I hear something new each time.
So many of the songs make me so emotional, but I'm also just weirdly emotional about the very existence of this album. I just can't believe that they were able to do something this good so late in their career. And that Bono maybe almost died. And how these guys have stood by each other through so much for four decades. It's just beautiful!
And-barely anyone is fighting on Interference. It's mind blowing!
So many of the songs make me so emotional, but I'm also just weirdly emotional about the very existence of this album. I just can't believe that they were able to do something this good so late in their career. And that Bono maybe almost died. And how these guys have stood by each other through so much for four decades. It's just beautiful!
And-barely anyone is fighting on Interference. It's mind blowing!
Agreed. I don’t even entirely agree with Bono’s viewpoint here, but I don’t think it’s corny at all. As a a hopeful message to his children, it’s simply beautiful and moving.
BVS
Blue Crack Supplier
Like Eddie Vedder said, “It's already been sung, but it can't be said enough
All you need is love”. And of course the Beatles weren’t the first to say it, but the fact that it has to keep being said is a question in itself.
Unfortunately, this ideal will always sound corny. But we have to have the believers...
U2DMfan
Rock n' Roll Doggie VIP PASS
Can anyone say whether the song from the Fender clip with Edge made it to the album?
It's an older and more mature Interference - many of us have been here close to 20 years....pretty wild when you think about it
I remember when Interference first came into existence with a leak of Discotheque.....that was a moment when I thought wow what the heck is U2 up to!
A completely dark album is fine (such as Pop). But I think it is significantly more difficult to keep it varied and running through a gamut of lightness and darkness while keeping thematic consistency. They were able to do that with SOE. SOE is somewhat dark, but not stuck there, like they were stuck in Pop.
nuke126
War Child
As someone who said that (and granted it was based on a single listen), my impression was that the music was too direct and obvious and the lyrics were simplistic.
The first impression was really that the band was trying to hard on this one.
I have been wrong before but I didn’t feel this was one I would go back to.
Probably not specific enough, but it’s something
that's exactly how i hear the song. it's really good but it's just so U2 and sounds like they're trying to hard to make a big, grand song with a huge theme, etc.
nuke126
War Child
it did not
I broke down and listened to the cd leak. This album is great. Highlights for me are Red Flag Day, Showman, Landlady, Lights of Home, GOOYAW, and Little Things, LIAWHL. In terms of nitpicking, I would say the weakest link is Love is Bigger - it's a nice song but not incredibly interesting to me and I feel it's missing something.
But I listen to the album 6 times over now and really like the whole album....the songs I was meh on prior to release fit well into the sequencing and gain a little bit by there placement (Best Thing, American Soul). I liked Little Things on TJT tour, but the album version is phenomenal.
Showman reminds me a little of Elvis Costello + the Attractions.
This album gets four and a half stars out of five from me. I think it's really well done. Better than SOI - and I liked SOI. Probably best album all the way through since AB. No major drop offs.
But I listen to the album 6 times over now and really like the whole album....the songs I was meh on prior to release fit well into the sequencing and gain a little bit by there placement (Best Thing, American Soul). I liked Little Things on TJT tour, but the album version is phenomenal.
Showman reminds me a little of Elvis Costello + the Attractions.
This album gets four and a half stars out of five from me. I think it's really well done. Better than SOI - and I liked SOI. Probably best album all the way through since AB. No major drop offs.
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womanfish
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
womanfish
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
You know you have a great album on your hands when you can’t decide if
Love is All
Red Flag Day
Summer of Love
Landlady
Or 13 is your favorite song.
Seriously, 5 songs in the running for my favorite.
And about 3 more just a hair under these
Crazy. Crazy good.
Love is All
Red Flag Day
Summer of Love
Landlady
Or 13 is your favorite song.
Seriously, 5 songs in the running for my favorite.
And about 3 more just a hair under these
Crazy. Crazy good.
hasin73
Refugee
I have a much different take on tracks 3 through 5 than most here… I think Best Thing and Get Out absolutely belong on this record, and fit and flow well. The two tracks that I think stick out, thematically, are an obvious and not so obvious choice – American Soul and Summer of Love. Now I don’t hate American Soul as much as others, and I think Summer of Love is a great tune – but they’re both clearly about current events, whereas the rest of the album is incredibly personal in nature.
The first two tracks floor me in every possible way. This is the strongest 1-2 punch from a U2 album since Achtung Baby. First with Love Is All We Have Left – an ethereal song about one’s own mortality. But Lights of Home (and btw I’ll differ again in that I MUCH prefer the album version to the strings version, which doesn’t work for me) is where it really kicks in, especially when you tie it back to Iris. This song could go so many different ways in interpretation (Bono’s best lyrics always do) – but I think this is Bono contemplating death, the afterlife, and if his mom will recognize him in heaven. He references the bike crash pretty directly here…
“shouldn’t be here ‘cause I should be dead”…
”thought my head was harder than ground”…
“hey, I’ve been waiting to get home a long time…”
“do you know my name? … in your eyes I see it, the lights of home”
Then with the callback to Iris… specifically a part that was written as if it was Bono’s mom talking to him “see yourself to be yourself”… almost as if his mom is calling down to him telling him he’s going to be okay.
And with this thought, Best Thing makes much more sense… especially the start… “when you look so good, the pain in your face doesn’t show”. Very tongue and cheek reference to his cracked face. This life altering event took place, and now he’s reflecting back.
Get Out has always been more personal in nature than political… and I’ve changed my mind about who the letter is written to. I don’t think it’s a letter to his daughters (nor did I ever think it was a silly letter to America). I think it’s a letter to himself. The Kendrick Lamar part actually makes significantly more sense when you look at the song this way.
American Soul is where it changes… but I guess when you consider Bono and how politically active he is it’s hard to think of him not dragging politics into it somehow. As I said earlier, I don’t hate American Soul as much as many… but if there’s a clunker, this is it. I’d have been happy if the political diversion was left at Summer of Love.
Summer of Love is a terrific tune – thematically it doesn’t fit the album, but it would have been a shame to have left it out. It also is one of those lyrics that people could see as a love song rather than a song about Aleppo, so it works better than American Soul in that vein.
Red Flag Day is a nice transition out of the political diversion – I can see it as a song about refugees fleeing Syria, but I can also see it as a song about Ali – with a little tie back to Every Breaking Wave “I’ll meet you where the waves are breaking”. Another one of Bono’s lyrics that can be read in different ways.
The Showman & The Little Things That Give You Away are partners. Showman is the upbeat, tongue and cheek critique of singers – a self-deprecating look at Bono’s struggles. I do wonder if Bono maybe struggled with depression – and that’s tied into this mysterious ailment that nobody seems to want to talk about. Showman talks about being up late at night, unable to sleep - which ties directly to Little Things, which is absolutely gorgeous and a stunner. I absolutely think this one is also autobiographical – with younger Bono talking to current self through the first half, and then the “sometimes…” part is the current Bono talking about his inner demons. The end… “the pane of glass shatters, and you’re the only thing that matters, but I can’t see you through the tears…” is now about Ali helping him get through these demons.
Which comes into Landlady… a beautiful take on coming to the realization that you’ve been taking your loved one for granted. I think it’s intentional that this is the start of “part 3” of the album and not merely a timing thing. This is now the letters to his loved ones part of the album.
I don’t see Blackout as political whatsoever. Sure, maybe he tweaked a lyric to make it have multiple meetings, but Blackout is Bono’s letter to the Adam, Larry and Edge – their struggle for late career relevance and the missteps (see Songs of Innocence & Apple), the uncertainty over Bono’s future (be it from the bike crash or whatever other incident may have occurred... when the lights go out could be taken literally about bono’s noggin or metaphorically about celebrity) … but don’t you ever doubt the light that we can really be.
Love Is Bigger is to his kids. This is the cliché’ song, but the music and message is beautiful and it works.
13 I think is current Bono writing a letter to himself – specifically his 13 year old self, the last year of his life before his mom died and his life turned upside down, and this whole crazy journey started.
This is a terrific album – musically and lyrically. It’s been a long time since they’ve put out something this cohesive from top to bottom. As good as Songs of Innocence was, it never had that “magic” that really good U2 albums have. It’s as if it was polished away in the studio. This also seems like one work, built from the group up with a mission and theme and that they stuck with it, as opposed to the disjointed nature of Innocence and No Line On The Horizon, where the split in producers, where they knew they were going to go in a different direction, is evident and brings down both works.
This is a deep and dark album, but not depressingly so, with touches of joy throughout. It reconnects with the ethereal/classic U2 sound without being derivative, remaining fresh and modern sounding. There are warts, but they’re fewer and further between than the past two works.
As for criticisms? Yea, American Soul sticks out as the clunker of the bunch, but it’s not as bad as a Boots or Stand Up Comedy. I also think that Bono’s voice sounds so good that they probably did a lot of studio magic on it, and I’m not sure how some of the songs will translate live (Love Is Bigger, for example). And the single choices aren’t reflective of the album at all (even though I think Best Things and Get Out work well on the album). If they needed an uptempo number for the first single, Lights of Home or Red Flag Day would have been my choices. Alas… I’m hoping they really explore some of the tracks beyond Best Thing and Get Out on these upcoming promo appearances (and please god that doesn’t mean American Soul). If it were up to me I’d have them play Little Things and Lights of Home for SNL, and then drop in Best Thing as the “third song during the closing credits” if they get it.
I think I’ve gone on long enough now
You have described the album so beautifully even Bono himself would find it difficult to top.
CosmoKramer
Rock n' Roll Doggie
- Joined
- Aug 19, 2004
- Messages
- 3,325
Love is very powerful. I mean I would argue that when it comes to love, you don’t need money, fame or even say a credit car to ride that train as that is just the power of Love.
TinKnight
Refugee
What I love about this album is that it's dark, but its undeniably about joy and love. I don't want to sound like a broken record, but it feels more like a companion album to Achtung Baby than Songs of Innocence.
kiwilad
Refugee
That can be changed. Have a pop at Landlady. Then I'll fight you.
Hollow Island
New Yorker
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2011
- Messages
- 2,947
I'm shocked that the Bono that went into hiding after Pop showed up again. This is a dark album but it's also their most fun - the fun songs sound so natural. It's lovely to hear. The emotional range of SOE is one of my favorite aspects of it.
kiwilad
Refugee
Agree. No question there are still a bunch of lyrical facepalms on this album. Too many repeated buzz words too. It's not lyrically above criticism in any way.
But I almost figured I'd forgive him that if he'd make me feel he still cared. That's one of the major differences between U2 and the rest. Their lyrics meant something.
This time around he's unabashedly writing as a middle aged man. And meaning it. And it's such a relief.
hasin73
Refugee
U2FloridaFan
New Yorker
I've also started dropping acronyms. Shorter versions of the title like Love Is All, is much better and actually faster to type. Headache's crusade is starting to take hold.
Thank you. Hate the acronyms!!
cseggleton
War Child
Tried to PM you about sending a CD to you but your mailbox was full. I've got your address and will mail a copy to you over the weekend!! Enjoy!!!
joydivision8
The Fly
- Joined
- Feb 23, 2009
- Messages
- 38
Anyone who can send me the link for the proper deluxe SOE album download...you will be remembered fondly always!!!
joydivision8@yahoo.com
joydivision8@yahoo.com
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