there's nothing age defeatist about it
they've done dance before
it's time to move on
and it makes sense to, if they feel like incorporating a genre, pick something they can explore for the next decade without looking desperate
I don't think they've done dance before (crap commissioned remixes don't count). They haven't ever really wholly shifted genre either, only incorporated an element. And I can't see them changing that. So they've incorporated electronica before, a little bit, but that in itself is still a wide, wide open field for them. Zooropa is the only album where there is an almost wholesale change in the shape and nature of U2, on many tracks. They only built it into Pop in a way that gave it a heavy, traffic jammed feel. As a sonic booster, not a game changer. That's front to back a rock album. Neither of those are ‘dance’ or ‘club’, and there’s nothing to suggest that they’d wholesale-shift either, and almost certainly not in this era. But returning to some electronic influence and assistance doesn’t have to be a re-tread. There's a whole world out there of complimentary options for them, as yet untouched.
And I think reaching out in that direction could actually really help. Eno is Eno. Eno is brilliant, Eno is God, but Eno is Eno. Eno is old news for the band. Maybe too comfortable. I think they need more encouragement to step out a bit further, swim out to the deep end a bit more, and I think specifically Edge needs a new launching pad. Eno starts the day by firing up a synthy string sample, with a few new beeps and whirs – again – and surprise, surprise, Edge drops a all-too-familiar chimey guitar part over the top of it – again.
They need a new Eno. Someone who works in a similar way, but is coming from a different and fresh direction. Someone who wouldn’t be too dramatically different, in percentage terms, to what Eno brings or adds to a song, but quite different in what they are launching the band off. Someone creatively inspirational (not Rubin), but not a wholesale overhaul (not Dre). So someone bringing something wholly new, but wholly complimentary.
I'd
love them to hit on that moody, atmospheric post-Pop feel of Stateless and Ground Beneath Her Feet, but with someone
like Danger Mouse, or RjD2, or DJ Shadow swirling in the background. There's almost no way that would happen, for a bunch of reasons, but for people who would love to see U2 shake it up a bit, bring in someone wildly different (for them) as a collaborator/producer, re-engage with the details, and perhaps incorporate some electro again, or even give Bono his hip-hop-feel wish, but give it to him in a pair of safe hands (i.e. not poptastic will.i.am, or the brilliant but too overt Dr Dre), then that's a style of producer they could go to, without shaking up the core of what they do, or sound like. It would really be not too different to Eno, just fresh and different.
And there might not be longevity in that partnership, but it might be a great sparking point for them launching off into a more experimental but restricted final phase. Not wholly launch off on some overhaul-experimentation, but I think the phase or music stream they have in them, but have barely touched, is that more delicate, layered, and deep-end-of-the-pool stuff, and this is one interesting way to approach it that might lead to it becoming a new phase. Does that make sense? It might not produce hit singles, and it might not go over great in a stadium, but if they've ever got room between needing either, it could be truly fantastic.
And I do believe that a whole leap into that Stateless/Ground Beneath sound and feel would have been the 'other' choice in the post-Pop fork in the road, one that in an alternate universe, where U2 were not a gazillion album and ticket seller band, they could have easily taken, perhaps more likely taken. It would be a real shame - maybe the greatest U2 shame - if we never got a latter phase of U2 that was beyond commercial pressure, because I think now that's really the only way we'll get anything genuinely, all-over new from them. And surely, after all this time, there’s more going on then the safety and re-treads suggest. Surely there’s more interesting stuff they’re into, or trying, and it’s getting washed out along the way, or kept separate, for whatever reason. Surely Crazy Tonight is not what a band who have all of those very different, very creative albums under their belt reach as some kind of final zenith. They can ‘go back to basics’, they have every right to return to previous sounds, but surely there’s still an interest in the new. Surely what we are getting is what they think U2 albums should be, but there are musical interests and hobbies still bubbling away in there, and they just don’t let the two collide anymore? It peeps through every now and then, I’d just love for them to let it wholly out.
But this is massively drifting. They're calling it 'club' music. I can't really believe U2 are working on - let alone thinking of releasing - an, as it's been neatly described, "nst, nst, nst" album. When they say that, I can only really picture it, given it being 2010 and all, as something more like Magnificent with it's dancey beat brought more front and centre. Just fairly typical U2 songs... jumped up.
Anyway, what a rant!
I fully agree that the Stateless/Ground Beneath sound represented an alternative, and when you think about it, ATYCLB wasn't too far away (frustratingly). If you bring in Stateless, Ground Beneath and Levitate for Wild Honey, Walk On (a horrible song in my view) and Peace on Earth you arguably have a viable post-Pop album. What we got wasn't too bad but it encouraged them to think that only a stripped-down sound could work, leading to HTDAAB (an artistic disaster in my view).
you make the call.
