SOE 21 - It comes down to this...

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They're playing Little Things in Barcelona right now. Bono dedicated the song to their record company. He then said "Songs of Experience is coming out at the end of the year, according to The Edge..."

Another sign pointing to December 1.
 
BEAL said:
I never understood why they are so tight lipped on their own music. I could understand if they came out and made statements like "This might be the greatest U2 track we have ever written" which would then get a lot of attention and hype

But to talk about a certain song being a "wonderful melodic ballad, with a killer baseline from Adam".....

Suppose as much as they tinker though, when the song is released there's a chance it's just a piano track
Click to expand...

A lot of bands do things a similar way though. Maybe some more vague than others (as this one was in the lead-up to SOI, which I suspect had a lot to do with the release method towards the end).

But part of it is that you kind of want things to be a surprise for people closer to the release when they'll actually hear it. Or if it's early on in the process, you'll risk saying something and people will either get negative impressions of it just from the words, or they'll be asking "What happened to that song?" when the album finally comes out.

They've gone into some details in the past anyway. More than a few song titles have been given out by Bono over the years. Then there's interviews like the one months before SOI came out where he went into detail on songs like This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now or The Troubles. Or he's given the "punk rock on Venus" comments which people ripped into mercilessly on here, so it's gone all sorts of ways in the past. In more recent years, I've been content with the more vague answers anyway because it's more or less going to be out when it's out.
 
Yeah, I was listening to the Barcelona show live too. That was a pretty definitive introduction. SOE is coming out this year.
 
back to the hotel right after the Barcelona show. Experiencing Little Things makes it a bit better for me. Not totally convinced yet. SOE cover was on the screen after Little Things
 
I know this is pointless this far in, but shouldn't the band be playing Pride before Bad? Such a better segue opportunity.

Not to mention you get another popular, catchy track up front.

Either way it's too early in the set for Bad to fully resonate but if they're dead set on doing it before the main album set they should at least bump it ahead one slot.
 
BEAL said:
Prepare for the scripted answers

Bono -- "The record will be done when Edge says it is. Edge, is it done?"
Edge -- "Almost"

end of SOE interview

I never understood why they are so tight lipped on their own music. I could understand if they came out and made statements like "This might be the greatest U2 track we have ever written" which would then get a lot of attention and hype

But to talk about a certain song being a "wonderful melodic ballad, with a killer baseline from Adam".....

Suppose as much as they tinker though, when the song is released there's a chance it's just a piano track
Click to expand...

Kendrick has called DAMN his best album though it's clearly not
 
lazarus said:
I know this is pointless this far in, but shouldn't the band be playing Pride before Bad? Such a better segue opportunity.

Not to mention you get another popular, catchy track up front.

Either way it's too early in the set for Bad to fully resonate but if they're dead set on doing it before the main album set they should at least bump it ahead one slot.
Click to expand...



Yeah, the Pride/Streets segue didn't work in 2005 and it doesn't work now.
 
Northside said:
They're playing Little Things in Barcelona right now. Bono dedicated the song to their record company. He then said "Songs of Experience is coming out at the end of the year, according to The Edge..."

Another sign pointing to December 1.
Click to expand...

But why add in the "according to The Edge". Is this what he thinks is now a hilarious running joke? With any other band pepel would be speculating it's a bit of a snide dig.

I just find it really weird to be honest!
 
I'm sure it is a snide dig. I would be legitimately pissed if three members signed off on a release 9 months before only for one to want to fuck around and tinker with it indefinitely - especially if I was late 50s and craving relevance.

This is his way of putting a rocket up him to finish it.
 
dan_smee said:
I'm sure it is a snide dig. I would be legitimately pissed if three members signed off on a release 9 months before only for one to want to fuck around and tinker with it indefinitely - especially if I was late 50s and craving relevance.

This is his way of putting a rocket up him to finish it.
Click to expand...
I'm wondering what exactly Edge has been doing this whole time to finish it? Surely not just guitar overdubs? Or is he acting as an engineer/producer for this album?
 
ChargedVT said:
I'm wondering what exactly Edge has been doing this whole time to finish it? Surely not just guitar overdubs? Or is he acting as an engineer/producer for this album?
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My understanding is he almost always adds production - whether he is credited or not. On one hand, I think he adds a lot of atmospherics and interest to songs when he does (see Zooropa), but on the other hand, if the songs are simple, he overcooks the buggery out of them.
 
ChargedVT said:
I'm wondering what exactly Edge has been doing this whole time to finish it? Surely not just guitar overdubs? Or is he acting as an engineer/producer for this album?
Click to expand...

Remember that they re-recorded most (if not all) of the album earlier this year with Steve Lillywhite. So that would've been the most major thing that happened between the doomed 2016 release and the projected December 2017 release.

So maybe for once it was the opposite, and edge felt the album was too overproduced, so they needed to re-do it to capture the raw, aggressive feeling they said SoE was gong to have.

(Though from other comments from the band it does sound like edge has been doing his classic tinkering lately. Either way, hopefully they avoid over production this time!)
 
You know, we can't be entirely sure that Edge (or the rest of the band) will wind up using all the Lillywhite takes for the album.

Maybe there's some hemming and hawing over which actually sound better.

So we could wind up with another hodgepodge of an album that lacks sonic cohesiveness.
 
I'd love to be a fly on the wall at the moment when the band and management are discussing the new album. I'd genuinely like to know what the management are advising them and if there's any tension in the band about why its not ready to release and why they've been re-recording and tinkering and all that stuff.

Not to mention why SOI album and tour never just rolled over in to the SOE album and tour, but we've done that one to death.

As I've said many times, they really can just release new music whenever its good to go (let's gloss over SOI release because they and Apple managed to screw that one up with that one tiny setting, presumably a single switch which was set to yes rather than no).

They're in such a privileged position as a band who can sell out tours at the drop of a hat. Even the whole thing about reducing 16 songs to 10 was strange. Why not release a series of 3 or 4 EPs instead of one album - one a month and you can mix up the safer songs with less-safe, more experimental or edgy ones?

I get their strive for perfection, but surely they're aware as anyone about the danger of over-cooking things if they never decide they're done. So you end up with something which lacks cohesion.

They're equal parts fascinating and frustrating.
 
Mack_Again said:
U2 is like Smashing Pumpkins where one dude controls all the creative processes of the band, that's why
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Creative process and tinkering with post producing are chalk and cheese.

If you are inferring it is Edge, just watch Bono leading the show on From the Sky Down.
 
Crazy theories
And some tired old haikus
This is the blue crack
 
ascender_RS said:
They're in such a privileged position as a band who can sell out tours at the drop of a hat. Even the whole thing about reducing 16 songs to 10 was strange. Why not release a series of 3 or 4 EPs instead of one album - one a month and you can mix up the safer songs with less-safe, more experimental or edgy ones?
Click to expand...

I've noticed that a lot of older acts tend to hold onto the idea of the album as being a whole representation of their work at the time. Some of the newer acts are releasing EPs of their material, maybe because it's easier for management or whoever to convince them that just releasing one or two songs to get attention will be the best way to segway onto an album itself.

In a similar vein, narrowing something down from 16 to 10 makes sense to me too. Artists almost always record more songs than needed, and putting the "best ones" and others into something of a coherent listening experience seems to go into that whole album thing too. A few outliers never killed anyone, but yeah... if you're an artist that puts 15+ songs on an album, chances are fans will cherry pick the ones they like anyway.

As for veteran acts releasing multiple EPs, there hasn't been too many cases like that in the past... and I'm not sure if it's even a smart one for attention-seeking purposes. The first EP would make people think "Hey, new stuff from U2 or so-and-so", but then that goes a bit downhill with every consecutive release. The Pixies did something similar when they started recording again a few years ago, then when they announced the third one, they also said they were just putting all the songs on one album anyway.
 
despite the fact that releasing bunch of EPs seems like a better idea, those EPs never sound good. or this idea never works, somehow. like, Green Day did that and all EPs were critically panned, and stuff.
 
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