New Album Discussion 10 - Songs of Sir, this is a Wendy's, durr

[dan_smee]

Probably an overreaction, but 40 Foot Man is the most inspired U2 has sounded in a decade (and this is coming from someone who loves SOE).



It’s like Rattle and Hum meets TUF meets 2023.

I like it as well. The lyrics aren’t great, but there’s an ease and realness to the music that makes it a joy to listen to.

 

[clerks]

It's not u2. It's just Bono and The Edge right? But still good yes.

 

[clerks]

INVISIBLE is the song that is standing out most from SOS in terms of how I felt about it before and how it's now becoming part of my soul. It's been giving new life.

 

[zoocarolina]

INVISIBLE is the song that is standing out most from SOS in terms of how I felt about it before and how it's now becoming part of my soul. It's been giving new life.

It was a fantastic song back in 2014 and should have been on the album proper and lead single, but all is forgiven now with a proper SOS release.

 

[zoocarolina]

On U2 overload which is an incredible place to be. All the interviews, Zane Lowe was the best of the bunch for me, album a little over a day ago, letterman special and tiny desk! I am blown away by it all including the timing, the passion and most of all the content which is all brilliant. Can’t wait until they’re all back together and like Bono said to Zane, get out of our way when we’re in full flight, paraphrasing, since a rock n roll band getting back to the top of their game is a sight to see.

 

[womanfish]

INVISIBLE is the song that is standing out most from SOS in terms of how I felt about it before and how it's now becoming part of my soul. It's been giving new life.

Yep, i'm discovering this. It almost makes me mad because I'm in the minority around here for not really like Invisible 2014, and this version I must say, has got me reevaluating and liking it quite a bit a more.

Damn you Invisible!!!!

 

[dan_smee]

I feel like we should be talking more about IGWSHA and Lights of Home.

Both are so much more authentically emotional than the originals sound. IGWSHA always sounded rushed together so not quite the finished idea, and LOH seemed like a lot of the authenticity was produced out of it. Both hit hard in this set. Absolutely love them both.

Bono’s voice is so not shot. Some takes are more raw, but it’s 100% a stylistic choice. Works so well as a collection.

 

[clerks]

I feel like we should be talking more about IGWSHA and Lights of Home.

Both are so much more authentically emotional than the originals sound. IGWSHA always sounded rushed together so not quite the finished idea, and LOH seemed like a lot of the authenticity was produced out of it. Both hit hard in this set. Absolutely love them both.

Bono’s voice is so not shot. Some takes are more raw, but it’s 100% a stylistic choice. Works so well as a collection.

Holy crap just write GOD ANGELS or something it took me forever to get what song that was... maybe it's just me, but unless it's NASA these things just confuse me more.

Both Angels and Lights of Home are two songs I love, Lights of Home on the BBC thing is crazy great. Both great on this album.

See I felt the emotion BOTH before and now.

But fuck, this is some good shit right????

 

[dan_smee]

Holy crap just write GOD ANGELS or something it took me forever to get what song that was... maybe it's just me, but unless it's NASA these things just confuse me more.



Both Angels and Lights of Home are two songs I love, Lights of Home on the BBC thing is crazy great. Both great on this album.



See I felt the emotion BOTH before and now.



But fuck, this is some good shit right????

Yeah it really is. I was annoyed by people calling it the end of the band a while ago, now I’m just laughing at them. Good times.

 

[Tyagu_Anaykus]

So which disc you like the most?
For me its the adam one. The others are great but the songs on adam disc are amazing.

 

[dan_smee]

So which disc you like the most?
For me its the adam one. The others are great but the songs on adam disc are amazing.

On first listen it was definitely Larry. Now it’s probably Adam. But Edge and Bono are both great. It’s hard to pick.

Did you enjoy the rest of your first listen?

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Also saw the Unforgettable Fire tonight and they were absolutely incredible. What an absolutely fun St. Patrick’s day

Oh thanks for saying hi

 

[dan_smee]

Thinking more about the terrible release strategy - I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better to release one disc per fortnight leading up to the full thing on 17 March. Imagine the edge disc dropping on 3 Feb, Larry on 17, Adam on 3 March and Bono on release day. They could have played little shows on each one or done some sort of unique promo thing to accompany it. They really shat the bed just releasing those four tracks so spaced out. It really didn’t give a good account of the quality of the package.

 

[Tyagu_Anaykus]

On first listen it was definitely Larry. Now it’s probably Adam. But Edge and Bono are both great. It’s hard to pick.

Did you enjoy the rest of your first listen?

Yes. I mean i still cant stand get out of your own way, but now is bearable.
BAD is a standout. I actually really liked streets and 11 oclock. Invisible too.
Two hearts is incredible.

The larry one was the hardest to listen.

But on that first listen when i heard the adam disc i was crying the end. Weird emotions but a sense of fuck these guys really belong in the top of the list of the greatest bands.

 

[Tyagu_Anaykus]

Besides, the edge singing is always a plus!

 

[dan_smee]

Yes. I mean i still cant stand get out of your own way, but now is bearable.
BAD is a standout. I actually really liked streets and 11 oclock. Invisible too.
Two hearts is incredible.

The larry one was the hardest to listen.

But on that first listen when i heard the adam disc i was crying the end. Weird emotions but a sense of fuck these guys really belong in the top of the list of the greatest bands.

It’s funny because through these last few days I’ve had a similar feeling. U2 fandom has always been about loving something that is greater than the sun if it’s parts. Edge is a wizard but not a top tier technical guitarist. None of them are among the greatest exponents of their trades from a purely skills based view of the world. But the these last few days I’ve really come to appreciate their skills a lot more. Edge’s playing - piano and guitar have been really on show without having lots of effects to build around or hide behind. Bono is creating melody, and singing in a way he never has before. It’s been a real moment for me in appreciating their raw skills more than I ever have.

 

[DeVaul]

Thinking more about the terrible release strategy - I wonder if it wouldn’t have been better to release one disc per fortnight leading up to the full thing on 17 March. Imagine the edge disc dropping on 3 Feb, Larry on 17, Adam on 3 March and Bono on release day. They could have played little shows on each one or done some sort of unique promo thing to accompany it. They really shat the bed just releasing those four tracks so spaced out. It really didn’t give a good account of the quality of the package.

Ladies and gentlemen… U2

 

[zoocarolina]

It’s funny because through these last few days I’ve had a similar feeling. U2 fandom has always been about loving something that is greater than the sun if it’s parts. Edge is a wizard but not a top tier technical guitarist. None of them are among the greatest exponents of their trades from a purely skills based view of the world. But the these last few days I’ve really come to appreciate their skills a lot more. Edge’s playing - piano and guitar have been really on show without having lots of effects to build around or hide behind. Bono is creating melody, and singing in a way he never has before. It’s been a real moment for me in appreciating their raw skills more than I ever have.

I don’t want to ever hear them self-deprecating themselves ever again. It’s fine saying that when they first started out and using some smoke and mirrors for awhile, but these stripped down and partly re-imagined songs prove they are master craftsmen and this new jumping off point bodes well for the next chapter and probable tail end of their career where some of their catalogue will be celebrated for centuries. Ok I maybe high off U2 overload fumes, but it’s not an exaggeration when I just randomly hear In God’s Country at Walmart yesterday while picking out my pasta. [emoji4]

 

[DeVaul]

So which disc you like the most?
For me its the adam one.

Oh you said *disc*

 

[cseggleton]

I don’t want to ever hear them self-deprecating themselves ever again. It’s fine saying that when they first started out and using some smoke and mirrors for awhile, but these stripped down and partly re-imagined songs prove they are master craftsmen and this new jumping off point bodes well for the next chapter and probable tail end of their career where some of their catalogue will be celebrated for centuries. Ok I maybe high off U2 overload fumes, but it’s not an exaggeration when I just randomly hear In God’s Country at Walmart yesterday while picking out my pasta. [emoji4]

OK with everything you said except picking out pasta at Walmart!

 

[danm]

Interview with Adam: https://www.billboard.com/music/rock/u2-songs-of-surrender-documentary-adam-clayton-1235288985/amp/

Adam Clayton Breaks Down U2’s ‘Songs of Surrender,’ Teases Upcoming Documentary Projects

Gary Graff
3/17/2023

On Friday (March 17 – St. Patrick’s Day, appropriately enough), the Irish quartet brought forth Songs of Surrender, its first new album in six years — a companion of sorts to frontman Bono’s 2022 memoir — that finds the band reimagining 40 songs from throughout its career. It is accompanied by Bono & The Edge: A Sort Of Homecoming, With Dave Letterman, a documentary that is now streaming on Disney+. U2 also unveiled a U2SOS40 video series that will eventually feature 60-second clips, by different creators, for each of the songs, while the band’s return to live performing will take place this fall as the inaugural concerts at the MSG Sphere in Las Vegas.

And if that isn’t enough, bassist Adam Clayton has also partnered with Fender for a new amplifier, the ACB 50. “It feels like a bonus the whole way, just because this is at a time in your life where you don’t expect to be this busy,” Clayton, who turned 63 last week, tells Billboard via Zoom from Dublin. “I guess we’re very lucky that we get to do the thing that we’ve always loved doing and we’re still doing it, and somehow we’re still getting better at doing it. At some point I suppose the arc changes, but I don’t feel like we’re at that point yet. I think we’ve got a lot of extra knowledge along the way that we’ve picked up and we can make better and better records from here on out.”

Songs of Surrender is certainly a project that came as a surprise. That album, according to Clayton, was spurred directly by Bono’s best-selling Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, in which the singer used 40 U2 songs as a narrative vehicle for his story. The album, according to Clayton, “was one of the more organic processes that U2 engaged in. We started to talk about what we could be doing while (Bono) was busy making this book. Edge said, ‘Let me have a look at those titles. Let me see if I can come up with a different space for those songs so we can present them in a way where the narrative of the song in some way is associated to the arc of the book.'” The Edge began creating drastically different arrangements, mostly stripped down and more intimate, sometimes changing lyrics and even vocalists; The Edge, in fact, stepped up to sing several of the tracks himself.

“We started to see that a lot of the early songs that had felt incomplete or unfinished or naive, when one looked at them now, those were songs with a lot of DNA and intuition on them,” Clayton explains. “From the position of being in our sixties, those lyrics and those songs meant something, and it meant Edge could slow them down. He could bring the key down. Bono could deliver the vocals in a different way. And suddenly there was a personality that had much more of the gravitas of a story that Johnny Cash or Willie Nelson might tell. It engaged with you in a different way. It stopped you thinking about that big ol’ 80s rock band that had this big, stadium-filling sound.”

The bassist has some favorites amongst the 40, including “Stories For Boys,” which Clayton calls “a beautiful insight into Edge as an artist and a singer,” and “All I Want Is You,” which allowed him to do some acoustic bass playing where “I can really hear the air moving and I can hear my fingers on the strings, and I just like that intimacy.”

While each grouping of 10 songs is consigned to one member of the band, that’s more of a packaging element than anything symbolic, he says. “It was after everything was recorded,” he says, “so it wasn’t that I curated the tracks that were gonna be on my (side of) the record. I’m not gonna say it’s random, but it’s not premeditated as such. It’s open to whatever interpretation the listener might want to make. But I think I made out pretty well because I have a lot of good, melodic material but I also have some of the heavy-hitting rock tunes. And I get ‘Electrical Storm,’ which is one of my favorites, I have to say. And I think the version of ‘The Fly’ that makes it onto my record is interesting as well; it shows that we weren’t averse to using a little bit of electronica whenever the color demanded it.”

The big surprise in his batch, Clayton adds, is spectral “Desire” from 1988’s Rattle and Hum, sung by The Edge in falsetto. “It’s quite odd and challenging, and I accept that, because it’s got a very, very heavy keyboard bass, which is nice. It’s not really the way I would’ve expected to hear ‘Desire,’ but I’ll certainly take that bass keyboard part. I loved that.”

Songs of Surrender and the Disney+ documentary were generated by U2’s prominent frontline, Bono and The Edge, In fact, a note during the end credits of A Sort of Homecoming finds them thanking Clayton and Mullen for “letting us go rogue” with that project. Clayton says he has no objections to them taking the reins. “How can you be pissed off with people that you’ve done really well by for such a long time,” he explains. “I’m a big fan of Bono and Edge, and of Larry. I love to see Bono and Edge do interesting things.” He proclaims “big respect” for Bono’s book and for the series of solo concerts he’s been performing around it, and for The Edge taking the reins with Songs of Surrender. “I’m grateful to be in a band with those two extraordinary talents and hard-working people. They’re great songwriters, great artists but they’re great humanitarians and they’re really great people. I need to be inspired and I need to be led by that kind of thinking. I believe in music as a higher art, a higher form, and you don’t have to be dumbed down by it. You can change the world with a guitar — that’s what I signed up for.”

U2 will be looking to do just that later this year in Las Vegas. Dates have not yet been announced but rehearsals will be starting soon, and while the shows will feature 1991’s Achtung Baby album in its entirety, Clayton says “that’s only gonna be about an hour of the show, so we’re gonna have to find a way of going other places as well.” The shows will also be the first U2 has performed without Mullen, who’s taking the year off to treat and recuperate from various injuries he’s accumulated over the years; Bram van den Berg from the Dutch band Krezip will be filling the void.

“I don’t know what it’s going to be like,” Clayton says. “I haven’t played with anyone else before. I know playing with Larry Mullen, he always made me sound good, and that was half the job done. So it might just keep us on our toes. I’m sure we’ll find our groove. I think Bram is a great player. He’s got a great reputation. He’s a lovely man. If the musician’s heart is in the right place, the music follows without too much difficulty.”

There’s plenty on the U2’s agenda as well. The band members have recently spoken about new music, and that they’ve put a planned Songs of Ascent on the back burner in favor of something louder and more aggressive. “That’s the intention,” Clayton acknowledges. “I think we’re feeling that music has kind of got stuck a little bit. We’re feeling that probably with modern processing and modern production techniques and the use of digital that it’s lost some of its spontaneity and some of its rawness, and I think we’re hoping that we can kind of connect back to that rawness that we were excited by as teenagers.” That said, Clayton adds that only “some very, very minimal” recording has been done so far.

“Edge is always working on stuff,” Clayton notes, “but until we get the Sphere shows out of the way and we know what’s going to be happening with Larry, it’ll be very hard to organize what we’ve got and figure out what the plan will be.”

Also on U2’s plate is some archival documentary work. “We’re amazed by the amount of out there on the Beatles or whatever, and there’s some real value to that material,” Clayton says. “During this whole lockdown period we kinda started to go back through our archive and develop some stuff…and put together some sort of a narrative on the history of the band. It will tell a different story of U2. I think everybody thinks they probably know the U2 story reasonably well at this point…and of course it’s only one version of the story. There are other things to our story that we’re excited to be bringing to people.”

As for his new amplifier, Clayton considers it “another one of those once in a lifetime experiences.” He was inspired to pursue it when Fender did a signature guitar amp with The Edge — “I got a little jealous, I guess. I thought, ‘Well, if Edge can have an amp, I’m gonna have an amp!'” — and took the idea to the company, which has not routinely done signature bass amps. He worked with technicians to develop an all-in-one combo amplifier he describes as “the loudest 50 watts you’re ever gonna need,” noting it also has more mid-range than Fender bass amps had previously produced. “You can fit it in a smart car and carry it up the stairs on your shoulder as well,” he notes. “It’s the kind of amp you can take anywhere. You can do anything with it, and it just keeps on giving.” Clayton plans to use several of the ACB 50s during U2’s live dates, positioned under the stage. Details about the amp can be found via fender.com.

 

[phanan]

"very, very minimal recording"

2025 it is.

 

[RoKKeR]

The “you can only have it all if you give it all away” part of Bad is pretty special and not something I expected from the new version.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Edge is always working on stuff,” Clayton notes, “but until we get the Sphere shows out of the way and we know what’s going to be happening with Larry, it’ll be very hard to organize what we’ve got and figure out what the plan will be.”



Well that sounds ominous

 

[BEAL]

Retirement it is then

 

[ndmaxfield]

Retirement it is then

Hate to say it, but that's the vibe I'm getting too.

 

[JamietheEdgefan]

Edge is always working on stuff,” Clayton notes, “but until we get the Sphere shows out of the way and we know what’s going to be happening with Larry, it’ll be very hard to organize what we’ve got and figure out what the plan will be.”



Well that sounds ominous

I took this part more to mean that they're waiting for Larry to be better before going full steam ahead with the next album, which seems pretty positive (even if Larry's recovery time is unclear).

The talk of only very minimal recording is a bit of a bummer. Presumably they can't start in earnest until Larry is better, so they might not even properly start recording until the end of the year or even 2024.

Kind of flies in the face of u2songs reporting the album is largely done, and that Edge was working on final mixes in autumn '22. Of course they're not right about everything, but this seems like a much bigger contradiction than getting a few details wrong.

(It wouldn't surprise me if more work is done than Adam is letting on, but who wants to put an album out and say "oh we actually finished this ages ago, it's not really that new anymore but we had to wait for our drummer")

 

[super fly guy]

Guys I need help,I'm loving Get Out Of Your Own Way.[emoji853]

 

[danm]

Edge is always working on stuff,” Clayton notes, “but until we get the Sphere shows out of the way and we know what’s going to be happening with Larry, it’ll be very hard to organize what we’ve got and figure out what the plan will be.”



Well that sounds ominous

Not really. Clearly they need to monitor Larry’s recovery.

 

[BEAL]

I took this part more to mean that they're waiting for Larry to be better before going full steam ahead with the next album, which seems pretty positive (even if Larry's recovery time is unclear).



The talk of only very minimal recording is a bit of a bummer. Presumably they can't start in earnest until Larry is better, so they might not even properly start recording until the end of the year or even 2024.



Kind of flies in the face of u2songs reporting the album is largely done, and that Edge was working on final mixes in autumn '22. Of course they're not right about everything, but this seems like a much bigger contradiction than getting a few details wrong.



(It wouldn't surprise me if more work is done than Adam is letting on, but who wants to put an album out and say "oh we actually finished this ages ago, it's not really that new anymore but we had to wait for our drummer")

In the Letterman doc, Edge revealed he had something like 6000 recordings on his phone, and played the 40 foot man for Dave.

Bono probably considers each recording a finished song and therefore the band has 300 albums worth of music ready to be released

Adam has always been the most grounded with expectations and current work.

SOA and Guitar Album are nothing more than ideas at this point, tho I’m willing to bet there are SOME completed songs for the former.

They definitely won’t record or tour a proper U2 album until Larry is healthy enough. When that is, and does Larry actually want to, is the unknown.