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Boston Globe joins the bashing!! This stuff is comical!!On ‘Songs of Experience,’ U2 go to their safe space
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SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
By Terence Cawley GLOBE CORRESPONDENT NOVEMBER 29, 2017
Had U2 not caused a kerfuffle by directly uploading their 2014 album “Songs of Innocence” to the iTunes libraries of the world, it’s likely the album would have come and gone without anyone outside the band’s core audience really noticing. Instead, the PR stunt backfired spectacularly, coming off as the latest unwelcome symptom of Bono’s weapons-grade hubris and resulting in a perfectly fine album getting some of the worst reviews of the Irish arena-rockers’ career. The public shaming seems to have chastened the group, who, after three years of promising that the companion album “Songs of Experience” was coming soon, have finally released it to about as little fanfare as a band this huge can manage. It’s a strikingly low-stakes record that seems to mark U2’s official retirement from taking risks or trying to be the biggest band in the world — and that’s definitely a mixed blessing.

“Songs of Experience” rarely deviates from the template that 2000’s “All That You Can’t Leave Behind” established for U2’s third act; that means lots of generically motivational lyrics and arrangements that patiently build to their inevitable crescendos. When the Edge’s echoing arpeggios ring out on the chorus of lead single “You’re the Best Thing About Me,” it works on an almost Pavlovian level, making you hear all the U2 songs with similar guitar parts you’ve ever loved. Regrettably, the band rarely builds up enough momentum to achieve lift-off, instead slowing to an adult contemporary-friendly gait for much of the album’s second half. In these tepid environs, the fuzzed-out stomp of “American Soul” and bass-driven groove of “The Blackout” stand out as highlights merely for elevating the listener’s heart rate a bit.

As he did before “Songs of Innocence,” Bono has claimed that the lyrics of “Songs of Experience” are among the most personal he’s written, but by now U2 fans know better than to take him at his word on such matters. He does go deep on a few songs, reflecting on the gratitude he felt after surviving a brush with death on “Lights of Home” and detailing a late-night anxiety attack with unsparing honesty on “The Little Things That Give You Away.” More typical are “Love Is All We Have Left” and “Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way,” neither of which has much to say beyond those isn’t-love-grand titles. Kendrick Lamar probably dashed off the Beatitude-flipping monologue that bridges “Get Out of Your Own Way” and “American Soul” in 10 minutes tops, and it’s still easily one of the album’s most insightful moments.

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Taken as a whole, “Songs of Experience” isn’t a bad U2 album — just an uneven one. For every dull rehash of past glories, there’s something like the slinky Zombies pastiche “Summer of Love” to restore one’s faith that U2’s well of inspiration hasn’t gone entirely dry. It’ll be interesting to see where the band goes after this record: Their next album could be a hushed meditation on mortality, or it could be a collection of cloud-busting stadium anthems. “Songs of Experience” tries to have it both ways, and though it works about half the time, there’s something disappointing about seeing a band that once straddled the sublime and ridiculous so brilliantly now hedging their bets.
 
Headache in a Suitcase said:
Hey kids

Remember when you all made fun of the Rolling Stones when they released Voodoo Lounge and Bridges To Babylon?

Yea. Now you know how it feels.

Relax, have a glass of wine that these young whipper snappers can't even afford, and don't give a turkey about what some douche who dictates to you what the "exciting music" is says.

But remember, you were once that douche.
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I guess the difference is as a rock music fan, I loved Voodoo Lounge and Bridges to Babylon. Well, Bridges ti Babylon more than Voodoo Lounge, but hey, it's the fricking Rolling Stones! But I do remember that all the critics tore apart anything the Stones did back then. I remember one particularly funny review titled "Doodoo Lounge" lol.
 
Not to be a stalker but you take a look at the backgrounds of some of these writers and it is hilarious they are allowed to write...I know everyone has an opinion but it just shows how lazy these news outlets are. For example Terence Crawley of the GlobeI
LinkedIn profile:
I am seeking a career that will allow me to have a positive impact on the world, whether that be by working to improve the health and well-being of the global population through the biological sciences, by informing and educating through my journalistic writing, or through some combination of the two. I am passionate about contributing to society through both my scholarly endeavors and my active community service.
and
I assist in the day-to-day operations of the Living and Arts sections of The Boston Globe by managing social media accounts and researching/writing various recurring features, among other responsibilities. I also pitch and write original stories for these sections.
and
Worked in Northeastern University Professor Phyllis Strauss' laboratory to learn skills necessary to work in biochemistry lab (keeping lab journal, writing lab reports, operating lab equipment, etc.). Received course credit for completion of the directed study program.
and
I wrote a lazy hatchet job of a review on a U2 album once!! oh well bed time!
 
cseggleton said:
Not to be a stalker but you take a look at the backgrounds of some of these writers and it is hilarious they are allowed to write...I know everyone has an opinion but it just shows how lazy these news outlets are. For example Terence Crawley of the GlobeI
LinkedIn profile:
I am seeking a career that will allow me to have a positive impact on the world, whether that be by working to improve the health and well-being of the global population through the biological sciences, by informing and educating through my journalistic writing, or through some combination of the two. I am passionate about contributing to society through both my scholarly endeavors and my active community service.
and
I assist in the day-to-day operations of the Living and Arts sections of The Boston Globe by managing social media accounts and researching/writing various recurring features, among other responsibilities. I also pitch and write original stories for these sections.
and
Worked in Northeastern University Professor Phyllis Strauss' laboratory to learn skills necessary to work in biochemistry lab (keeping lab journal, writing lab reports, operating lab equipment, etc.). Received course credit for completion of the directed study program.
and
I wrote a lazy hatchet job of a review on a U2 album once!! oh well bed time!
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:doh::doh::doh::doh:
 
:lol: I laughed when I saw that scene. Though I don't hate all critics. Some of them can help you enjoy art by helping you add perspective. Of course most of these music reviewers are just trying to gauge what responses will get them more articles. Some of them might actually have the album and keep listening to it even if it was a negative review.
 
akann said:
This is the headline on NME's website.

"Liam Gallagher announced as Godlike Genius at the VO5 NME Awards 2018"

Says it all really.
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U2 won that in 2001,I bet the nme have erased that from history :)
 
My tuppenceworth...

U2 are the damned - Damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Bono is cliched or trite or a parody of himself whether he sings about love or loss or lightness or darkness or politics or the world in crisis or anything at all. Whether they return to their old form or whether they break new ground most reviewers just want them to crash and burn already.

U2 are also perhaps one of the biggest troll magnets on the planet and many of these reviewers are just glorified trolls. By all means give a negative review if you can back it up with some strong arguments and a critical insight; but very few of the reviewers seem to offer any basis for their critique beyond blatant prejudice. Hence there is no consensus amongst the naysayers and one reviewers standout track is contradicted as another one’s low point. And it really proves that these beautifully crafted songs are just being spat out without being tasted or savored at all, for the simple reason that most of these people have either had a bellyful of U2 and they can’t stomach any more or they just can’t even allow themselves to be seen to favor the band in any way at all, and that really is a shame. It’s like the opposite to the emperors new clothes. They’re saying the emperor is naked when clearly he is dressed in the finest of handcrafted embellished gowns. The world of the biased and prejudiced music “critic” simply doesn’t want to listen to an extremely wealthy motormouthed Bono singing of his fears for his family and the world at large from the idyllic surroundings of his Ivory tower on Vico Road and hence they refuse to acknowledge what U2 have accomplished here.

In the end it won’t really matter because these songs really do speak for themselves and they will do even moreso in time. What the band have accomplished here and delivered for their fans is nothing short of astounding. The last time I immersed myself and enjoyed an album to this extent was Achtung Baby. The songs are so rich and layered and most of the songs although they feel familiar, just sound like nothing else out there.

Just to give a little insight on how this album affects me; I took a road trip last night just as the sun was setting and it was a clear frosty winter sky and a relatively empty motorway ahead of me and when I pressed play on Love is All We Have Left...the landscape suddenly took on an eerie quality. Like that scene from Watership Down where the rabbit sees the blood bleeding from the horizon into the landscape. I love that. U2’s ability to emote and create atmosphere to that extent satisfies me no end (coupled with my imagination).

From that achingly sublime first track right through to the last track, there’s just song (Lights of Home) after song (Summer of Love) after song (Red Flag Day) after song (The Little Things) after song (Landlady) after song (Love is Bigger Than...) that simply blow me away. It really is no time not to be alive and a great time just to be a U2 fan.
 
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Its fine for reviewers not to like something, but lazy and poorly written reviews are so frustrating to read. Then you have reviewers who start off with a couple of paragraphs giving their view on Bono or the negative reaction to how they released SOI, which is something that happened over three years ago now!
 
jakehu said:
Do not post on here very often, but read posts a few times a day in different threads. I am actually suprised with how many negative reviews there have been from newspapers that in the past have given ok reviews. I knew the NME would hammer the album. The editor hates the band. Unfortunately U2 are not liked in general in Britain, although they have a large loyal fan base. People cannot seem to separate their dislike of Bono & give the music a chance. I really believe this album is their strongest in a long time & is a grower. There is an agenda out there & as others have said they could make JT & AB now & they would still be dismissed. As I write this in an Adelaide hotel room hoping England can fight back in the ashes I am hoping for at least few more decent reviews which the album deserves.
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I dont have a dog in that fight, but a win for England in the first Test would have made a delectable series. It can run away from England pretty fast now, although this is one of the weaker Australian teams to host the Ashes this millenium
 
This is England's best chance. Going to be cold by Aussie weather standards & the pink ball should suit. Got a feeling we will just sneak it. If we do not, heads will drop & it will be a whitewash yet again !.
 
Really, an all-time great band making music past their 40s is on a hiding to nothing. It's not surprising at all. I actually liked the rolling stones thing that headache posted.
 
jakehu said:
This is England's best chance. Going to be cold by Aussie weather standards & the pink ball should suit. Got a feeling we will just sneak it. If we do not, heads will drop & it will be a whitewash yet again !.
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Something just doesn't seem right this series with England. From the Ben stokes incident to him now actually being in New Zealand to the 2nd innings collapse.

We needed stokes badly, our batting Just isn't the same without him. It is a poor Australia side but there still fairly strong in the bowling department

Agree that This a huge test win or draw and we in the series lose and it will be a whitewash. Fingers crossed
 
Hi Renno, fellow baggie if I remember !. Yes, the stokes situation is odd. The back up bowlers are not up to it. Can't say I am a pardew fan but anything is better than pulis.
 
Mixed review:

Can 'Songs of Experience' make U2 matter again?

Can 'Songs of Experience' make U2 matter again?
Updated: NOVEMBER 29, 2017 — 5:21 PM EST

Singer Bono, left, and Adam Clayton, from the band U2 perform on stage in Trafalgar Square ahead of the 2017 MTV Europe Music Awards, in London, Saturday, Nov. 11, 2017. (Photo by Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP)

by Dan DeLuca, Music Critic ddeluca@phillynews.com
Has there ever been a band that feels as desperate a need to matter as U2?

The Irish rock superstars, whose 14th album, Songs of Experience, comes out Friday are still wildly successful when it comes to selling concert tickets. Bono and the boys packed Lincoln Financial Field on their Joshua Tree redux tour this year, and they’ll be in South Philadelphia to play the Wells Fargo Center on June 13 and 14.

But filling arenas and stadiums on the basis of a career’s worth of much-loved songs is a qualitatively different achievement from continuing to make new music that speaks to the here and now.

That’s what U2 has so earnestly aimed to do for decades, including in the 1990s, when they smartly positioned themselves as anti-earnest on a series of glitzy albums starting with 1991’s masterwork Achtung, Baby!

Don’t knock them for it. Sure, even his most ardent fans must get sick and tired of the lead singer, the most messianic frontman in the history of rock and roll, whose save-the-world hubris was made manifest in the rollout of the 2014 album Songs of Innocence, which was placed in the music library of iTunes users throughout the world, like it or not.

But it’s that stubborn insistence on keeping pace with the times — and trying to say something serious about them — that has propelled Bono, guitarist Edge, bassist Adam Clayton, and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. into the position of maintaining a mass audience without entirely succumbing to becoming an oldies act. The band finally caved with the Joshua Tree anniversary tour, but until then, the foursome that has been together for 40 years without a lineup change had held nostalgia at bay.

So Songs of Experience (Interscope ** 1/2) has plenty of work to do in hopes of getting the band back on track and making U2 sound relevant in 2017.

The album — which, along with its predecessor, takes its title, with characteristic chutzpah if not insufferable pretension, from a 1789 William Blake poetry collection — has been much delayed.

It was initially scheduled to follow swiftly after Songs of Innocence but was pushed back after that album’s not-terrible music was overshadowed by its botched release. Then Bono suffered a debilitating bike accident in Central Park in 2015, which he sings about on the new album’s “Lights of Home” (“I thought my head was harder than ground”). That song also seems to allude to another as yet not-spoken-about health crisis for the 57-year-old songwriter, who coyly shares: “I shouldn’t be here, ’cause I should be dead.”

And then there’s the matter of Donald Trump. With Songs of Experience all but finished, the music was overtaken by world events. First, Britain retreated from the international stage with the Brexit vote, and then Trump was elected on a build-a-wall platform that’s anathema to Bono’s vision of the United States as a beacon offering hope to the hopeless around the world.

That perspective is put forth on Songs of Experience’s “American Soul,” which features a guest appearance by rapper Kendrick Lamar that’s neither fully integrated nor well thought out. (In fact, the Irish band didn’t seem to know what to do with the Compton emcee’s verse, which is inserted between “American Soul” and the previous track, “Get Out of Your Own Way.”)

“American Soul” itself feels like a pasted-together song, in which the Edge rocks out and the band bangs away at familiar themes with the ham-handed chorus: “You and I are rock and roll, you are rock and roll / We came here looking for American soul.”

But to be fair, the verses also neatly summarize the message of inclusiveness the band aims to get across: “It’s not a place,” Bono sings, “This country is to me a thought that offers grace.”

The premise of Songs of Experience is that the promise of acceptance has been betrayed, and the beacon of light dimmed, if not fully extinguished. As Bono puts it on “Blackout,” one of the album’s strongest tracks, whose wildcat energy evokes the 2004 hit “Vertigo,” it seems that “Democracy is flat on its back, Jack.”

In that grim environment, what is the role of music, of art, and, most important in this case, of U2? The answer, the album that was chiefly produced by Jacknife Lee and Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic (with assistance from many others) suggests, is to provide optimism and inspiration, and to repeatedly revisit the motif of shining a guiding light just when the night is at its darkest.

That concept is first floated on the quiet, maybe too-obvious opener “Love is All We Have Left,” in which Bono’s vocals are mildly AutoTuned. The lyric argues for a carpe diem engagement with rather than a retreat from the world: “This is no time not to be alive.”

Things get uneven from there, however, and recurring imagery suggests the band is short of ideas. “Light of Home” finds the road warrior rock star being pulled back to the comfort of his domicile, and he takes a similar trip in a love song to his wife, Ali, called “Landlady.”

Songs of Experience is autobiographical in content for Bono, and by design it contrasts with Songs of Innocence, which looked back on adolescence and U2’s formative years. The new album falls far short of the band’s best work, but it is more aggressive and energized than its predecessor.

And it has some fun along the way, as Bono cops to the narcissism of the lifelong entertainer in the strutting “The Showman” (who “prays his heartache will chart” and “makes a spectacle of falling apart”) and mocks his big mouth in the agreeably catchy “You’re the Best Thing about Me.”

Songs of Experience rounds to a close by repeating itself. “Love is Bigger Than Anything in Its Way” strikes a tender chord as it addresses a younger generation, warning against cynicism. (And, yes, those are Bono’s son Eli and Edge’s daughter Sian on the album cover.)

But U2 has played the unity-will-conquer-all card too many times already for it to resonate fully. With an encore closing anthem as stadium-worthy as “One,” what’s the point of going down that road again and again? And “Love” is followed by yet another track about finding the way out of the darkness, “13 (There is Light.)”

There’s nothing the matter with the song on its own: A wash of keyboards slowly builds in intensity, and Bono’s vocal gains power as he resists oversinging while bucking himself up to not stop believing. It just would be more effective if we didn’t have the sense that we’re experienced it all before.
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KUEFC09U2 said:
LOL not been around for a while what is the general consensus?
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What galls me was one reviewer's comments that even the most die-hard U2 fan wouldn't want to listen to SOE in 20 yeaars. How the ef does anyone know what they are going to want to listen to in 20 years? There is stuff from the 80's that I never would have expected anyone to still like that is super popular now, and other highly reviewed music that few people listen to now. Just a dumb critique.
 
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