truecoloursfly
The Fly
Yup, I finally got it a couple weeks ago. 'Cause I knew I "should," and a U2-friend kept urging me to hear it, certain I'd like it. My reservations? Well, the perception somehow that it was just a creative indulgence, a merely interesting experiment with a noted art-rock experimenter. Plus the fact that Larry openly disliked it. "Art for art's sake," as he called it, one of my own pet peeves as a painter. If you aren't illuminating life (if not my very SOUL), don't waste our time, you know?
Well, Larry, YOU'RE WRONG.
Even on first listen, in which I found music I really liked -- a LOT -- even then, it seemed an intellectual attraction. I liked "the experiment," -- I heard "an Eno album," rich in texture and atmosphere (I'm more an admirer than a fan) married to U2's deep sense of melody. I took it for an album I'd pull out occasionally when I was in the mood...
But I tell ya, folks, not a day's gone by that I haven't listened to it at least once, and the mood grows stronger every listen. It's seductive! Deeply sensual. It doesn't feel like a "U2" record; it is, however, an album made by musicians I know well, and hear with new ears. It's as if THEY are exploring their own musicality, outside the dictates of U2-music, along with us who are listening. They don't know what's coming out next either. And that big power that's in them, which fuels all those Big Songs of theirs, is contained by Eno's energy, it kind of rumbles underneath all those silky keyboard textures with a sexy tension. And I am completely seduced.
This is the first time I heard Miss Sarajevo. I am an opera fan, and Pavarotti's contribution is sublime -- and NOT gimmicky! What a hook, Is there a time...? Bono's subdued vocals throughout this album are more arresting than half of his wailing pleas elsewhere; I always was crazy about If You Wear That Velvet Dress, and wished to hear more of Bono in that place. Well, shite: Your Blue Room is about as perfect a piece of memory and desire as ever turned into music, and it makes me gasp sometimes.
Always Forever Now is a beautiful, simple, evocative musical phrase, and singing it aloud as I often seem to be doing at work feels like a whole song in three words. The way the vocals are layered, thicker and thicker, and then Bono's "commentary" on top -- again, it's in the repeated listening that I hear all that he's capable of saying without a lot of words.
Having said that, the words to Slug captivate me. Again, hypnotic musically, lulling us with repetition, with subtly building tension ... and a curiously personal-sounding narrative. ...Don't want you to get hurt/Can't help it, I'm a flirt...I don't want to be untrue/I want to be with you made me think of Sweetest Thing, and Acrobat. In this one, he manages to sing with both sorrow AND hunger (and once more I'm weak in the knees...). Don't want what I deserve is a fabulous line! And he ends the song with a sort of punchline/plea that illuminates the song's whole struggle, just by his delivery: Don't wanna stay the same. Simultaneously a declaration and a confession. Oh, there's so much more -- Let's Go Native could go on twice as long and not bore me, Corpse is growing on me -- I've put the whole thing on repeat for hours, hardly knowing where it starts or ends.
It sucks me in like a lover, and at times, I don't even want to leave my house. I want to stay and be wrapped in this...wow.
So am I the only one?
swept off my feet,
Deb D
------------------
the greatest frontman in the world - by truecoloursfly: http://www.atu2.com/news/article.src?ID=1575
Well, Larry, YOU'RE WRONG.
But I tell ya, folks, not a day's gone by that I haven't listened to it at least once, and the mood grows stronger every listen. It's seductive! Deeply sensual. It doesn't feel like a "U2" record; it is, however, an album made by musicians I know well, and hear with new ears. It's as if THEY are exploring their own musicality, outside the dictates of U2-music, along with us who are listening. They don't know what's coming out next either. And that big power that's in them, which fuels all those Big Songs of theirs, is contained by Eno's energy, it kind of rumbles underneath all those silky keyboard textures with a sexy tension. And I am completely seduced.
This is the first time I heard Miss Sarajevo. I am an opera fan, and Pavarotti's contribution is sublime -- and NOT gimmicky! What a hook, Is there a time...? Bono's subdued vocals throughout this album are more arresting than half of his wailing pleas elsewhere; I always was crazy about If You Wear That Velvet Dress, and wished to hear more of Bono in that place. Well, shite: Your Blue Room is about as perfect a piece of memory and desire as ever turned into music, and it makes me gasp sometimes.
Always Forever Now is a beautiful, simple, evocative musical phrase, and singing it aloud as I often seem to be doing at work feels like a whole song in three words. The way the vocals are layered, thicker and thicker, and then Bono's "commentary" on top -- again, it's in the repeated listening that I hear all that he's capable of saying without a lot of words.
Having said that, the words to Slug captivate me. Again, hypnotic musically, lulling us with repetition, with subtly building tension ... and a curiously personal-sounding narrative. ...Don't want you to get hurt/Can't help it, I'm a flirt...I don't want to be untrue/I want to be with you made me think of Sweetest Thing, and Acrobat. In this one, he manages to sing with both sorrow AND hunger (and once more I'm weak in the knees...). Don't want what I deserve is a fabulous line! And he ends the song with a sort of punchline/plea that illuminates the song's whole struggle, just by his delivery: Don't wanna stay the same. Simultaneously a declaration and a confession. Oh, there's so much more -- Let's Go Native could go on twice as long and not bore me, Corpse is growing on me -- I've put the whole thing on repeat for hours, hardly knowing where it starts or ends.
It sucks me in like a lover, and at times, I don't even want to leave my house. I want to stay and be wrapped in this...wow.
So am I the only one?
swept off my feet,
Deb D
------------------
the greatest frontman in the world - by truecoloursfly: http://www.atu2.com/news/article.src?ID=1575