Axver said:
The Final Cut isn't nearly as entertaining as post-Waters Floyd. Gilmour was hit and miss, but when he hit, he struck the bullseye.
That's a matter of personal taste, of course. I feel that The Final Cut pisses all over A Momentary Lapse of Reason/The Division Bell combined. For one thing, I think there's far more emotion on TFC than there is on AMLOR or TDB. When Roger Waters bellows out "his dream is driving me insane!" in The Gunner's Dream, I
feel it. I feel absolutely nothing in Pink Floyd's work post-1983. Sure, the music on The Division Bell was probably better than the music in The Final Cut, but the overal feeling just isn't the same for me.
I don't really agree with this. Besides Ripeness and Two Hearts Beat As One sounding like dead ringers for each other, I think the Echo/U2 comparisons are a bit overstated.
Let's take Crocodiles for example (the Echo album I know the best). It came out in 1980, same year as Boy. Nothing on Crocodiles sounds like Twilight or The Electric Co. Honestly, I don't feel the same energy and passion from the Bunnymen either.
And by War, I think the two bands were moving further away (besides the aforementioned THBAO similarity). War's driven by the powerful drumming and aggressive guitar - SBS, LAS, Refugee - and I've never heard anything quite like that on Echo and the Bunnymen's albums. Plus, I think NYD is an absolutely epic song, while I don't get a sense of "epic" from anything the Bunnymen did.
The songs don't have to sound the same in terms of the
notes played in order for the bands to sound similar. Listen to the music in a song like Monkeys. Or the title song. It definitely sounds like something U2
could have written (particularly the guitar in Monkeys and the bass lines) even though there aren't any U2 songs that have the same chord structures and whatnot. Ian McCulloch doesn't deliver with quite the same enthusiam and energy as early Bono did, I agree. But even still, Bono had some vocal mannerisms that were very Ian McCulloch-ish. That "I know you know, I know you know" in Crocodiles sounds a lot like Bono, to me.
Crocodiles isn't the album we should be comparing U2 to, though. Heaven Up Here is probably the Bunnymen album that sounds most like anything U2 could have done in the early 80s. The guitar/bass/drums in the middle of Over The Wall, for instance, are dead ringers for early U2. And for some reason, All My Colours reminds me a bit of Tomorrow (with the upbeat ending cut out).
Even when we look to recent Echo And The Bunnymen, there are still similarities - probably even more than there were in the 80s. There are songs on Evergreen (1997) that sound very much like U2 from 2000-present. "Too Young To Kneel" for instance. Even the lyrics sound like Bono lyrics.
Who's gonna hold you
When you're too scared to feel
Who's gonna cure you
When the pain won't heal
Who's gonna be there
When the world goes wrong
Who's gonna tell you
You're the only one
In my blood
In my soul
In this mind of mine
Can your touch
Turn me cold
Make my glitter shine
Who's gonna reach you
When you can't be caught
Who's gonna teach you
What you can't be taught
Who's gonna beat you
When you won't be fought
Who's gonna buy you
When you can't be bought
In my blood
In my soul
In this mind of mine
Can your touch
Turn me cold
Make my glitter shine
Who's gonna pray for you
When you're too young to kneel
Who's gonna fake it
When it gets too real
One more question answered
In the falling star
I heard they found
Death on Mars
In my blood
In my soul
In this mind of mine
Can your touch
Turn me cold
Make my glitter shine
The music in that one is very post 1999 U2-ish as well. Interesting, seeing as that album was released quite some time before ATYCLB and HTDAAB.
The thing that really tops it for me is this - I put Siberia on in the car a little while ago. My sister said, and I quote: "I've never heard this U2 album before, what's it called?"