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

[ndmaxfield]

COBL clip available.

I would describe it as pleasant.

I miss the dancing piano.

 

[clerks]

COBL book tour version he did twice in nyc maybe all shows and it was the highlight.

 

[DeVaul]

COBL book tour version he did twice in nyc maybe all shows and it was the highlight.

Oh someone went twice. Ain’t you special!

 

[danm]

That and any "lossless" options like Apple Music and whichever will probably be lower than lossless quality anyway, if you're just streaming via Bluetooth and such. I'm sure there's a way to set up cords to get that quality, but seems like a bit of work for me outside of just pressing play on what I already have on a laptop/hard drive set-up!

Any audio streamed over Wi-Fi rather than Bluetooth, such as Apple Airplay, retains the lossless quality. No wires needed.

 

[clerks]

Oh someone went twice. Ain’t you special!

He played it twice! So far only been 1 NYC show.

 

[dan_smee]

Photos of vinyl hype stickers showing up. A leak is possible if physical formats exist.

 

[DeVaul]

Any audio streamed over Wi-Fi rather than Bluetooth, such as Apple Airplay, retains the lossless quality. No wires needed.

(I apologize as we are miles from the tracks now…)

Depends on the protocol. If we’re talking using your phone/tablet as the launch source, for instance: Airplay tops out at 16-bit/48kHz (cd quality). Chromecast at 24/96.

Things get more interesting when you dive into specific providers.
-Amazon Music can cast *up to* 24/192 wirelessly depending on destination device.
- Sonos supports up to 24/48 when streaming Amazon Music.
- Apple Music streams 24/48 natively on Homepod. There’s no way to listen to 24/96 or 24/192 on Apple Music without a DAC connected to an apple device and then feeding into speakers or headphones. The Apple TV tops out at 24/48 but (!) will pass through Atmos tracks and even downsample to 5.1 if you’re into surround sound mixes.
-Spotify continues to be crap and has yet to even launch a hi res tier.

 

[DeVaul]

So anyway, uhh, how about those SOS Atmos mixes?

 

[clerks]

COBL clip was fucking awesome.

 

[womanfish]

COBL book tour version he did twice in nyc maybe all shows and it was the highlight.

In your opinion, would you say that the full version could be better and more interesting from the clip based on what you heard at the booktour show?

 

[danm]

A mixed review here: https://riffmagazine.com/album-reviews/u2-songs-of-surrender/

REVIEW: U2 unplugs (mostly) on ‘Songs of Surrender’ experiment
Roman Gokhman March 10, 2023, 9:00 pm

U2 has released alternate takes of its songs on collections before, but they’ve always been either as bonus material on re-releases (Kindergarten Achtung Baby) or as fan-club-only releases (Medium, Rare & Remastered, Artificial Horizon). Their latest, Songs of Surrender, is their first attempt at mass-market redos. And it’s a lot to take in!

These 40 songs often offer just a wisp of the rock and roll energy of the originals.
So, what’s the point? If you’re a long-time U2 listener, you’d better be looking for sides of the band’s music you had never considered before. If you’re set in your ways that the Edge’s ’80s guitar riffing should be all about the 400-millisecond delay, you might be put off hearing it replaced with the busy sound of his fingers sliding up and down the strings instead.

But a treat awaits those who don’t have favorite version of U2 songs, or those hearing some of these songs for the first time in any incarnation. Some of these songs are new versions of more recent material, and it’s very possible that casual listeners never heard the originals. Or—and hear me out here—you’re a folk music lover, or liked Bob Dylan better before he went electric.

Nonetheless, the album is a mixed bag. Many of these songs are in five-minute territory, meaning they don’t work well as singles. They’re broken up into four 10-track discs, each represented by a band member, but it’s unclear whether there’s a reason behind the specificity of their location in these playlists. All 40 songs were recorded over the past couple of years, but it doesn’t appear all four members were always involved. Numerous tracks don’t have perceptible bass or percussion. The Edge produced the album and has said that the goal was to replace post-punk urgency with intimacy. Practically, this means some of the songs are performed in different keys, at slower paces and with new chord progressions, and some include updated lyrics.

Many of these songs sound coffee-shop-ready. Others sound very similar to U2’s concert acoustic sets. At its best, Songs of Surrender shows alternate universe versions of U2’s classic catalog.

Imagine U2 with the Edge as lead vocalist. He sings lead on “Peace On Earth,” which was already a campfire-type song but is even more so now with an acoustic guitar handling the heavy lifting. He has more prominent vocals on other songs, too. “Stories For Boys” is one such early highlight with twinkling piano chords, a la “MLK,” with Bono and Edge harmonizing. The realization here is that this rocker of a song, one of U2’s first statements, is now a funereal dirge.

The album kicks off with one of its strongest songs, “One.” This version has drummer Larry Mullen, Jr. playing piano. It’s not a complicated part, but it’s beautifully done. At the same time, Abe Laboriel Jr., best known as Paul McCartney’s drummer, sings backup vocals.
Other songs take steps sideways, such as another early era rocker, “11 O’Clock Tick Tock,” now a jazzy mid-tempo tune fit for a lounge or even a ballroom, recalling Duran Duran’s “Save a Prayer.” Even more unusual, “Out Of Control” is presented in a folky Americana arrangement! Despite the sparse instrumentation (Bono, Edge, two acoustic guitar parts), it still feels energized. Who knew? “Pride (In The Name Of Love),” the last song on the first disc, finally introduces Edge’s electric guitar, though without delay. It sounds like 2000s U2 playing 1980s U2 without the latter’s signature delays. It also features an orchestra arrangement by Indian American tabla player Karsh Kale, and a choir consisting of Mumbai children, led by Delhi singer-songwriter Kamakshi Khanna.

Eighties fan favorite “Red Hill Mining Town” sounds almost retro-futuristic with spacey, chorus synths or guitar. Mullen’s signature militaristic snare drumming is present here, as well as a brass section of four musicians led by Trombone Shorty. “Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own,” from 2004’s How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, has a new chord progression, played on piano, which makes it sound like “Sunday Bloody Sunday.” It’s another tune that prominently features the Edge’s singing. A harp or harpsichord enters two-thirds of the way through, as well as Mullen’s drumming, which still sounds like he’s playing a march song.

“Dirty Day,” from 1993’s Zooropa, has a cello intro by Croatian musician HAUSER (who’s all over this album) before adding cellos (also HAUSER) and Edge’s ’90s-era guitar playing. The production also plays with the vocals. Sometimes Bono sounds like he’s right next to you. Other times, he’s far away.

The new take of hit “Vertigo” throws the kitchen sink at the song. Middle-Eastern strings open this arrangement, quickly joined by a cello or bowed bass, guitar and rattlesnake-like vibraslap played by Bono himself. The strings sound more Irish by the end. It’s different and will likely start some conversations, but does it achieve the goal of sounding more intimate? It sounds like it needs at least seven or eight people on stage to perform without backing tracks.

“Desire,” from 1988’s Rattle & Hum, is the most modern-sounding song on the entire album. It’s funky, with deep electronic bass. It wants to be a club anthem while holding onto its bluesy swagger. Results will vary. I liked it. The person sitting behind my shoulder audibly gagged.

If there are any songs with which U2 fans have yet to form long-lasting bonds, they’re the latest ones. So not surprisingly, “Lights of Home” (from 2017’s Songs of Experience), performed acoustically but as a full band, is as strong as the original even as it drops some of its rough alt-rock edge. It’s the most interesting song on the “Bono” disc.

Similarly, “Cedarwood Road,” from 2014’s Songs of Innocence, is an effective song that intensifies following a menacing bluesy rock riff in the second half.

The other interesting aspects to Songs of Surrender are the songs on which Bono tweaked the lyrics. Nowhere is this more significant than on the personal “I Will Follow,” from 1980’s Boy, which was influenced by the death of his mom. In this version, rather than his mother taking him by his hand, she lets go.

“The gift of grief will bring her voice to life,” he sings on a wholly reimagined verse, in a cacophony of guitar strumming and bass. But the important part is that it’s still a cacophony. This song remains full of confusion and anxiety.

The other big lyrical change comes on “Walk On,” from Bomb, which was notably originally written about Myanmar political prisoner, freedom fighter, then president—then deposed president—Aung San Suu Kyi. So this time, the song is about Ukraine.

“And if a dancer on the street wears a veil of tears/ It’s a dance no army can defeat/ Love turns her fears/ To a kind of rage that can’t be kept inside a cage/ You fight or fly/ You’re born or you die for freedom,” Bono sings, before adding, “Home is where the hurt is” (rather than “heart”). This rendition also offers a different fingerpicking pattern, lower on the guitar neck, and choir-like backing vocalizations.

Then on “If God Will Send His Angels,” from 1995’s Pop, Bono begs even harder for help with a new lyric: “If God can’t send his angels/ Can he come Himself right now?” This arrangement would have fit on U2 side project Passengers’ album Original Soundtracks 1. Stripped of the grinding synth, it sounds a lot more sincere.

“Viva viva la Ramone,” Bono sings on the new rendition of “The Miracle of Joey Ramone.” It’s his most famous catchphrase en Espanol since “Uno/Dos/Tres/ Catorce!” This song is moody but unsure whether it wants to be a slow song or a fast one. “Bad,” from 1984’s The Unforgettable Fire, offers new biblical imagery: “You could only have it all if you give it all away.”

Songs of Surrender stagnates on songs that offer a similar vibe as the original recordings, or on arrangements similar to what U2 has performed at concerts for years. These include the likes of “Beautiful Day,” “Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of” (Mullen’s son Ezra Mullen plays the tambourine), “Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses” and “Sunday Bloody Sunday” (on which Edge plays ukulele). If U2 hadn’t already released a mix of “The Fly” (1991’s Achtung Baby) called “Lounge Fly” in the ’90s, this new take would be a serviceable stand-in. The older song is better, and this one one gets weirder with a bunch of interesting elements that don’t gel together.

Likewise, the new version of “Stay (Faraway, So Close!)” gives off a symphonic vibe, but there’s already a fully orchestral version floating around that can’t be beat. There’s a dance/funk mix of “Two Hearts Beat As One” (1983’s War). U2 has released a similar version of this song before, though that one was for dance clubs in the 2000s, and this one is more ’70s—meant to be played at Studio 54.

And on “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” Bono sounds like a tired old lion trying to avoid his destiny. Perhaps his animated acting career has rubbed off on this arrangement. There’s an upside, though: The song has backing vocals by both Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois. They’re not marked as archival recordings, so this bodes well for future collaborations between these old friends. The bass duties are handled by Adam Clayton’s bass technician, Stuart Morgan.

And unfortunately, there are a couple of songs that strip U2 of what makes them U2. The original “Where The Streets Have No Name” and the version the band plays at concerts bring catharsis through a dopamine rush. But the version here is more about serotonin. Bono sings in hushed tones until the end over a piano and hazy synths. It never takes off. Likewise, “City Of Blinding Lights” and “Until The End Of The World” are gutted of their oomph. The former sounds like “Lullaby U2.”

Whether you view Songs of Surrender as a new U2 album, a mix of bonus material without a centerpiece or a companion to Bono’s theater production or his memoir, it should be enough to pique your interest. It’s just unlikely to replace the originals in your playlist.

 

[super fly guy]

Loving the clip of COBL,nice piano and delicate acoustic guitar.

 

[trevgreg]

To progress the point further, generally, as long as the speaker uses wifi or you use a wifi receiver you can get the sound quality to match the file potential - Bluetooth always drops quality, even in high end headphones, though they are getting much better. Streaming. Quality has eclipsed CD quality, not so much in bitrate which is what everyone assumes is the only factor, but by miles in terms of resolution. If you are someone who cares about having really good sound, wifi-based speakers or a good wifi receiver attached to good speakers is the best way to go.

Minor thread derail…

Ripping CD’s are still going to top out at CD quality; the stuff that is on streaming in hi-res is going to come in better than that. As for not losing the quality, “there are ways, dude.” Apple is notoriously locked down from a device perspective when it comes to actually playing lossless, like, anywhere. I went with Amazon Music, which has the same lossless library but can be utilized by some cheap-ish (sub-$100) smart devices that connect to standard dumb speakers. The devices also can play lossless from a NAS. If you’re curious, PM me and I will point the way.

Certainly open to exploring this more again, per yours and the other comments!

DeVaul, check your PMs.

 

[wolbersu2]

So anyway, uhh, how about those SOS Atmos mixes?

I heard about this mix... probably got shelved once again. No audio blu ray, that's for sure.

 

[danm]

https://www.irishpost.com/news/reinvention-rejuvenation-and-rock-roll-249144

Reinvention, rejuvenation and rock & roll

Tony Clayton-Lea reviews U2’s latest album Songs of Surrender

It was, U2’s bass player Adam Clayton has implied, a relatively straightforward idea that turned into an intricate one. He is talking about U2’s new album, Songs of Surrender, which is now in your physical and online record stores. There was, once upon a time, something of a stir in the multiverse when a new album by Ireland’s best-known rock band was released. Queues would form outside your Virgin Megastores and your HMVs, and as the shops opened at midnight, the hunger of the culturally vampiric fanbase would be satiated. They would hold their newly purchased CDs close to their bodies, go home and play them until dawn. By the time they headed out to work, they’d know all of the songs.

Time passes, and things change, but the fanbase still knows all the songs by now, don’t they? Think again. As any clued-in U2 admirer is aware, Songs of Surrender may be the ‘new’ U2 album, but its 40 songs have been culled from their back catalogue to be revisited, refurbished, and recalibrated. Is it, you may ask, a back-to-basics exercise, a marketing wheeze to annoy the converted — that have many different versions of many of the re-imagined songs, anyway — or some kind of devilishly clever way of allowing U2 to re-think and regroup? The answer lies somewhere in between.

Songs of Surrender began not as an album but as a method of referencing the chapters in Bono’s 2022 memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story. Whatever songs were chosen had to have, by necessity of the book’s narrative flow, some level of self-evaluation. As matters progressed, however, so did the number of songs, and while the pandemic pulled the rug out from under too many people, for U2 it was time to breathe. We say U2, but it has emerged that the plan to reshape the songs was primarily the idea of Bono (aka Paul Hewson) and the band’s guitarist, Edge (aka Dave Evans). The outcome of such a notion is that the restructured songs arrive with only the most subtle of appearances of bass or drums on them and yet because they are so well-known within the context of rock music, they are as much U2 as they have ever been. The songs are one but they’re not the same? Cheesy and clichéd, we admit (somewhat embarrassingly), but it’s true.

The album is sectioned into four ‘sides’, one for each of the band, but that could well be a superfluous strategy to have us think the songs have particular meaning to particular people. While that may or may not be true, for the U2 fan the album in its entirety should work. All the band’s best-known songs are here. We won’t list all of them, but they include Beautiful Day, Where the Streets Have No Name, Out of Control, One, Bad, Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of, Vertigo, City of Blinding Lights, I Still haven’t Found What I’m Looking For, Desire, Without or Without You, I Will Follow, and Sunday Bloody Sunday. We’d hazard a safe-as-houses guess that you’re familiar with the titles, but (quelle surpris) some of the renewed versions are almost unrecognisable.

A few examples: Stories for Boys and City of Blinding Lights are piano ballads; Every Breaking Wave is U2 as played by Erik Satie; Where the Streets Have no Name lays on a cushion of keyboards, Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of is an acoustic strum; Sometimes You Can’t Make it on Your Own floats on fragile melody lines; Desire is funk as delivered in a high-pitched falsetto; I Will Follow is a twinkly retake; and so on. You can cross reference and compare, for sure, but throughout there’s little or no comparison between the bombastic weight of some of the originals and the nuances Bono and Edge have successfully managed to inject here.

Some artists rejig their back pages for various reasons. Bob Dylan doesn’t revisit his songs in the studio or on record, but he changes them every time he plays a gig, and has done so for decades; on her 2011 album, Director’s Cut, Kate Bush amended what she deemed to be problematical production issues and arrangements of past songs; more recently, Taylor Swift has re-recorded some of her early albums in order to escape restrictive contractual bonds. U2’s reimagining, however, is surely the most investigative and advanced. Across the album, they dig deep into their personal history; they tweak lyrics here and there; they confront what they view as past mistakes and try to correct them. It sounds as if they have snipped tie-wraps that have been around their wrists for at least 25 years, and it seems to connect with the problems they have been facing for the last ten years on the twin albums Songs of Innocence (2014) and Songs of Experience (2017): how to view their past through a present-day lens without coming across as creative navel-gazers.

The album is also the sound of a band that knows they have occasionally underachieved and that wants to make amends in small but distinctive ways. With the four members now in their early 60s, what they have done here — we are presuming, of course, that while the majority of the work was conceived and conducted by Bono and Edge, Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr are in the mix, at least in spirit — is not so much a reinvention as a reflective rejuvenation.

Get it while it’s hot, too, because it won’t last long – Songs of Surrender is surely the final flick through U2’s back pages. According to the band, the next studio album will be full of intemperate, raucous and very loud rock songs. “We’re turning the amps on,” Adam Clayton recently informed Mojo magazine. “I certainly think the rock that we all grew up with as 16- and 17-year-olds, that rawness of those Patti Smith and Iggy Pop records… that kind of power is something we would love to connect back into.”

And so it begins. Again.

 

[DeVaul]

I heard about this mix... probably got shelved once again. No audio blu ray, that's for sure.

It’s streaming in Atmos.



If you’ve got Apple Music and an Apple TV connected to a home theatre system, you can hear the surround mix.

Oddly only *some* of the tracks are in hi-res stereo.

 

[JWR1992]

Does anybody know if u2.com ships early to ensure you have the album on day 1 of release or do they wait to ship until release date?

 

[danm]

Just had One on from Songs of Surrender, and my wife (who likes U2) said “I don’t like this version”. Mainly due to the weird vocal inflections Bono uses. I agree, it’s a shame as it makes the song far less listenable.

 

[clerks]

In your opinion, would you say that the full version could be better and more interesting from the clip based on what you heard at the booktour show?

i put up the whole show somewhere in one of this threads... is it still on the YouTube?

But I love the clip so I don't buy into this line of questioning... in general when Bono and Edge or full U2 is doing it live, it always sounds better to me. Few exceptions, usually the songs I love that they do a dumb dance remix of like (I'll Go Crazy).

 

[clerks]

Just had One on from Songs of Surrender, and my wife (who likes U2) said “I don’t like this version”. Mainly due to the weird vocal inflections Bono uses. I agree, it’s a shame as it makes the song far less listenable.

Surrender!
Surrender!

 

[clerks]

I haven't bought any version yet. But in general, I still love to go to a store and buy a physical copy of things I care about like U2. The way I did it when I first fell in love.

But I guess the last 2 albums I didn't do that... so I'm a liar.

Then again, I'm' a huge U2 fan and a mainstream whore and I think there are like 100 versions of last few albums I never bought, special deluxe, yada yada... bullshit.

So anyway, which version of SOS did you buy and from where?

My dream would be to be close enough to a Newbury comics to buy it... I may be in NYC but Virgin megastore is closed... I don't know if buying it in Best Buy is that exciting...

 

[DeVaul]

Too many versions. The vinyl prices will fall, even the 4LP. The SOE deluxe hit $30 a few times. I’ll wait for the drop

 

[CosmoKramer]

Just had One on from Songs of Surrender, and my wife (who likes U2) said “I don’t like this version”. Mainly due to the weird vocal inflections Bono uses. I agree, it’s a shame as it makes the song far less listenable.

That's my primary issue with the songs released so far and I anticipate the remaining songs. The song mixes are ok, (although I am in the camp that can't hear the bass and drums in the songs so far) but it's Bono's singing style that ruins these songs for me.....the "whisper singing" and inflections as you mentioned. The lyric changes are also more cringy than not in most cases (the "I'm greedy for you" line in WOW is awful...unless I am hearing it wrong).

I haven't heard COBL yet and most hear seem to feel it's the best one so far, so I am looking forward to giving that a try. I'm hopeful that out of the 40 there a more than a handful that I end up liking but I'm not so sure at this point.

 

[danm]

That's my primary issue with the songs released so far and I anticipate the remaining songs. The song mixes are ok, (although I am in the camp that can't hear the bass and drums in the songs so far) but it's Bono's singing style that ruins these songs for me.....the "whisper singing" and inflections as you mentioned. The lyric changes are also more cringy than not in most cases (the "I'm greedy for you" line in WOW is awful...unless I am hearing it wrong).

I haven't heard COBL yet and most hear seem to feel it's the best one so far, so I am looking forward to giving that a try. I'm hopeful that out of the 40 there a more than a handful that I end up liking but I'm not so sure at this point.

I don’t mind the more whispered vocals, but on One he does this strange upwards inflection one some words in the chorus that doesn’t sound good.

 

[dan_smee]

I haven't bought any version yet. But in general, I still love to go to a store and buy a physical copy of things I care about like U2. The way I did it when I first fell in love.

But I guess the last 2 albums I didn't do that... so I'm a liar.

Then again, I'm' a huge U2 fan and a mainstream whore and I think there are like 100 versions of last few albums I never bought, special deluxe, yada yada... bullshit.

So anyway, which version of SOS did you buy and from where?

My dream would be to be close enough to a Newbury comics to buy it... I may be in NYC but Virgin megastore is closed... I don't know if buying it in Best Buy is that exciting...

I have ordered the 4 disc vinyl from my local independent record store. In NYC there are surely a heap of places you can go to. I haven’t been there in 6 years, but I remember a few shops that would stock it, and there’s always Rough Trade.

 

[clerks]

I have ordered the 4 disc vinyl from my local independent record store. In NYC there are surely a heap of places you can go to. I haven’t been there in 6 years, but I remember a few shops that would stock it, and there’s always Rough Trade.

I lived there 20 years and I think only time i bought a CD or DVD was in union square area... mostly from Virgin and Best Buy... Sad but true. Mainstream whore!!!!

 

[dan_smee]

I lived there 20 years and I think only time i bought a CD or DVD was in union square area... mostly from Virgin and Best Buy... Sad but true. Mainstream whore!!!!

With cost of living there I’m not surprised people shop mainstream. It’s that or not eat!

 

[clerks]

With cost of living there I’m not surprised people shop mainstream. It’s that or not eat!

It was more expensive at Virgin. I'm just a lazy idiot.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

I recently paid my monthly YouTube Music subscription, so I'm all set.

 

[DeVaul]

I recently paid my monthly YouTube Music subscription, so I'm all set.

Your boy is grandfathered in from the ol’ GPM days