david said:
Achtung Baby was an experimental album for them (U2) at that time, but the sound wasn't really that ground breaking considering back in 1989 The Stone Roses fused dance beats with rock.
Exactly. In a greater musical sense it's not an experimental album at all, far from it. Within U2 it is to a degree, and mainly only in two areas. One is the way Edge is manipulating the sound of his guitar, the other is the rhythm section suddenly discovering the ability to shake one's ass. I'm not a guitar player, but when I listen to Edge on Even Better Than The Real Thing I don't hear any real difference there to what Edge is doing on Running To Stand Still. It's sped up. It's given an effect. It's given a different feel because of the hips the rhythm section are giving it. U2 on that album are experimenting with different things, but it's not really an experimental album at all. As said above, it was in the 80's that the first bands started taking the beat of a dance track and replicating it within their own rhythm sections. Stone Roses, New Order, Primal Scream etc etc. Doing that was new to U2, but only in the same way that tackling the bluesy sound was previously, or opening their music right up to the big stadium/atmospheric sound previously. Nothing really major considering the way they have always been. Edge of course is what brought the biggest sonic change in, the most shocking post Rattle & Hum, the one that people tag as 'experimental'. But again that's just really progressive. A guitar player determined, after a decade of figuring the different ways to play the thing, now wanting to fiddle with the different ways it can sound and how that can play it's own massively important role in the story and feeling of a song. The thoughts of temptation popping in and out of your mind in Mysterious Ways. The heartbreak in Love Is Blindness. I think in the 80's it was more "How can I play this?", in the 90's it was "How can I relate this?". Experimental? Well yes, he's experimenting, but really it's just a part of his progressive development as a guitar player, and a guitar player who more than most seems to be obsessed with all the different things that instrument can possible do. If he weren't to do that, he'd have always kept the clangy, bell wringing sound and would be.... a Slash. Stuck in a sound and feel.
I think U2 have experimented with different things on virtually every album from Boy to Pop, and therefore I just think it's either just called 'progression' or in another sense I think it's wrong to call the 90's their 'experimental period' because, to me, their whole career up until 1998 was the experimental period. I do definitely think U2 threw the brakes on with that post Pop. There is zero progression on the albums. Definitely progression as bass players, drummers, guitarists, vocalists in the sense that they, of course, are getting tighter and better with age and practice - and that in itself has brought change to the music - but not progression in a creative sense. It seems a lot of fans around here really fear the E word (experimental) more than any other. That in part makes me laugh because I feel it's probably the most misused word in U2's career, both in here and in the media. It also in part makes me sad because I think it's those fans that won the day post-Pop and scared the crap out of U2 into conserving their sound, retreading, re-energising the past in a very hit and miss way as opposed to actually following that path post-Pop to it's more natural next place. There are glimpses of that. Stateless. Ground Beneath Her Feet. Maybe Love & Peace or Else. Maybe even the sound of New York to a degree. There are glimpses in some of the ways they've reworked some older songs live. U2 learned a lot over those 20 years and it seems a real shame that we may never hear the culmination of it. Instead, take the old and retread it with the production of the 00's and play it with the tightness of a band with 25 years practice. Wow. How interesting.
I do believe there's a U2 album there that hasn't been made. A culminating album I guess. ATYCLB and HTDAAB are fucking safe. Safe in every way. Safe isn't the opposite of experimental. No-one is asking U2 to run away and force themselves into doing something unnatural. These albums are conservative. Very conservative. Conservative in the creative sense IS the opposite of progressive. The U2 Creative Journey, if it had to end, still ended early. It shouldn't end with Pop. They were clearly still learning on that album. I really, really want to hear what comes after that. What they are showing off on the last two albums (and tours) is just how fucking tight they are getting, how good they are getting with their instruments. Mix that with everything they've learned over their evolution. Please God walk into the room next time and slap them 'round. The sound of U2 in 2006 should be something quite incredible, it's been a long time in the making, not something simply updated from the past. They may as well have just kept making the same album over and over if this was always going to be the point they were to arrive at.
Boy was a beginning.
October was not experimental, it was progressive.
War was not experimental, it was progressive.
The Unforgettable Fire was not experimental, it was progressive.
The Joshua Tree was not experimental, it was progressive.
Rattle & Hum was not experimental, it was progressive.
Achtung Baby was not experimental, it was progressive.
Zooropa was not experimental, it was progressive.
Pop was not experimental, it was progressive.
All That You Can't Leave Behind was not experimental, it was not progressive, it was conservative.
How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb was not experimental, it was not progressive, it was conservative.
