Tyagu_Anaykus
New Yorker
They gave it 7/10
Well, considering that they're not a music newspaper I think it's pretty good.
I like this quote: "U2 being U2 again"
Here's the review:
From the last 25 years, side by side with the Echo & The Bunnymen or the Teardrop Explode, they represent the most relevant British music born form what post-punk had to offer.
In the beginning of the 80’s they released Boy and October, two healthy and agile albums, followed by both Epic War and The Unforgettable Fire, subtle records that required more listenings to love it and understand it. Live Aid “Mega-operation” in 1985 consumed the divorce.
From this moment U2 reached the top with The Joshua Tree and Rattle & Hum and tours that stopped the world.
In the 90’s the cycle that was started in the 80’s would suffer a new inflection. Finished the global affirmation, the four Irishmen were giving sign they didn’t know where to go. But solutions for this problem were found. After rising to the top, they had decided to “joke”, to play with their fame and with themselves with Acthung Baby and Zooropa and at the same time they made themselves surrounded with collaborators, like Howie B, capable to insert vitality to the project and to show other ways, like the synthetic Pop.
In 2000, All that You Can’t Leave Behind seemed to indicate a new era. After the pop irony in their last albums, they returned to the simple pleasure of rock, like if after playing with Entertainment culture’s mechanisms they wanted to believe in them, again.
How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb follows the same way, but with a lot more of confidence and power. It’s the album where U2 comes back to be U2 again, without irony.
This an album where a group of four musicians look back and realize that what they know to do better are great, solid rock songs, direct and efficient. It’s, like Bono says, an application of William Burroughs’ rule. To dig into the past, to look around to the present and to try to perspective the future.
It’s not a bold record, but it’s a record from a band that continues to manage the career like no-one else. Through the years they created antibodies and done some unfortunate steps, but they knew how to live with the scars, accepting in a normal way what’s the price to pay when you want universal communication. Even so,
"How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb", has excited several interpretations. Some say it’s a symbolic extension from some of the most politicized lyrics made by them, but also the state of Bono’s mind after the death of his father. They themselves promote the ambiguity, asking “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb”. No-one has the answer unless Bono: “Love.”
In U2, what looks like individual transforms itself into something universal, the concrete to abstract and the lyrics continues to have impenetrable allegories, leading to several interpretations that however all people sings in unisonous. But this is the The Edge’s record. The opening theme, Vertigo could be created by The Strokes or by U2 in the earlier 80’s, with crying shouts of “yeah, yeah, yeah” at the end and pungent guitar. The same can be said to Love Peace or Else with the noisy guitar at its limits in a track of pure rock n’roll. Or like in Crumbs from Your Table and City of Blinding Lights with pedals of guitar in evidence. Miracle Drug promise a return to Boy and October like when Bono sings: “i want to trip inside your head, spend the day there, hear the things you haven't said".
In "Sometimes you can't make it on your own", the epic contours and the dramatic tension melt in the falsetto: "it's you when i look into the mirror".
In “A Man and a Woman” the acoustic guitar and the vibrant bass melt in a flutuant sound in one of the most obvious track of the album. But there is also room to ballads like One Step Closer or slower tracks that promote melodic developments in crescendo like Origin of the Species. But the dominant note is that the songs are dynamic and incisive, the metaphoric lyrics from Bono, the arsenal of solutions from The Edge and a kind of production that make us remember the first years of U2. It’s not a Rock Bomb. It’s the rock spirit from the past in a symbiosis to a tender look to the present (The Strokes, White Stripes, The Kills, etc,), packed by the recent melodic solutions with some semi-electronics effects. It’ll be a consistent Love-Bomb story.
Vítor Belanciano
U2
How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
Island, distri. Universal
(7/10)
you can find the this in
jornal.publico.pt/2004/11/05/Y/TADES01CX02.html
Well, considering that they're not a music newspaper I think it's pretty good.
I like this quote: "U2 being U2 again"
Here's the review:
From the last 25 years, side by side with the Echo & The Bunnymen or the Teardrop Explode, they represent the most relevant British music born form what post-punk had to offer.
In the beginning of the 80’s they released Boy and October, two healthy and agile albums, followed by both Epic War and The Unforgettable Fire, subtle records that required more listenings to love it and understand it. Live Aid “Mega-operation” in 1985 consumed the divorce.
From this moment U2 reached the top with The Joshua Tree and Rattle & Hum and tours that stopped the world.
In the 90’s the cycle that was started in the 80’s would suffer a new inflection. Finished the global affirmation, the four Irishmen were giving sign they didn’t know where to go. But solutions for this problem were found. After rising to the top, they had decided to “joke”, to play with their fame and with themselves with Acthung Baby and Zooropa and at the same time they made themselves surrounded with collaborators, like Howie B, capable to insert vitality to the project and to show other ways, like the synthetic Pop.
In 2000, All that You Can’t Leave Behind seemed to indicate a new era. After the pop irony in their last albums, they returned to the simple pleasure of rock, like if after playing with Entertainment culture’s mechanisms they wanted to believe in them, again.
How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb follows the same way, but with a lot more of confidence and power. It’s the album where U2 comes back to be U2 again, without irony.
This an album where a group of four musicians look back and realize that what they know to do better are great, solid rock songs, direct and efficient. It’s, like Bono says, an application of William Burroughs’ rule. To dig into the past, to look around to the present and to try to perspective the future.
It’s not a bold record, but it’s a record from a band that continues to manage the career like no-one else. Through the years they created antibodies and done some unfortunate steps, but they knew how to live with the scars, accepting in a normal way what’s the price to pay when you want universal communication. Even so,
"How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb", has excited several interpretations. Some say it’s a symbolic extension from some of the most politicized lyrics made by them, but also the state of Bono’s mind after the death of his father. They themselves promote the ambiguity, asking “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb”. No-one has the answer unless Bono: “Love.”
In U2, what looks like individual transforms itself into something universal, the concrete to abstract and the lyrics continues to have impenetrable allegories, leading to several interpretations that however all people sings in unisonous. But this is the The Edge’s record. The opening theme, Vertigo could be created by The Strokes or by U2 in the earlier 80’s, with crying shouts of “yeah, yeah, yeah” at the end and pungent guitar. The same can be said to Love Peace or Else with the noisy guitar at its limits in a track of pure rock n’roll. Or like in Crumbs from Your Table and City of Blinding Lights with pedals of guitar in evidence. Miracle Drug promise a return to Boy and October like when Bono sings: “i want to trip inside your head, spend the day there, hear the things you haven't said".
In "Sometimes you can't make it on your own", the epic contours and the dramatic tension melt in the falsetto: "it's you when i look into the mirror".
In “A Man and a Woman” the acoustic guitar and the vibrant bass melt in a flutuant sound in one of the most obvious track of the album. But there is also room to ballads like One Step Closer or slower tracks that promote melodic developments in crescendo like Origin of the Species. But the dominant note is that the songs are dynamic and incisive, the metaphoric lyrics from Bono, the arsenal of solutions from The Edge and a kind of production that make us remember the first years of U2. It’s not a Rock Bomb. It’s the rock spirit from the past in a symbiosis to a tender look to the present (The Strokes, White Stripes, The Kills, etc,), packed by the recent melodic solutions with some semi-electronics effects. It’ll be a consistent Love-Bomb story.
Vítor Belanciano
U2
How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb
Island, distri. Universal
(7/10)
you can find the this in
jornal.publico.pt/2004/11/05/Y/TADES01CX02.html