Uncut review...

[Sleep Over Jack]

"But even at their most glibly bombastic, there's a melancholy undertow that they can't shake. Though the band rattle and strum witht heir old '80s vigour, the lines that stay with you speak of a deeping malaise: "I'm at the place I started out from and I want back inside"..."The more you see the less you know"..."What happened to the beauty I had inside of me?"

So it feels like an overcompensation when the record builds to the inevitable, unequivocal prayer of "Yahweh" - the glinting skyscraping guitars of "Pride" and "Where The Streets Have No Name" reactivated and ringing as Bono pleads, "Take this heart... and make it brave"..It's yearning, rousing and franly, it's u2 on autopilot. It feels like a rather pat conclusion to such a troubled record, a piece of deus ex machina uplift tacked on to a film noir by a studio determined not to send the audience out on a downer"

 

[U2_Guy]

 

[Sleep Over Jack]

"And you suspect that someone in the band might feel this way, too. Because, for the UK release alone, the record actually concludes with "Fast Cars", an eerie, Arabic-flavoured sketch of a song recorded on their last day in the studio. Overloaded with "CCTV, pornography, CNBC", it feels like the dazed and hungover sequel to "Vertigo". The singer's "In detox and checking stocks" while "out in the desert they're dismantling an atomic bomb"..But the song seems rueful about its rehab: "Don't you worry about your mind", sings Bono in a fade clouded in muezzin wails, "you should worry about your pain/and the day it goes away...". It's an appropriately unsettling ending to a record that, at is best, is honest in in its doubts"




Reviewer: Stephen Trousse






Thats it

 

[TheFlyOnTheWall]

is that all now?

 

[ZeroDude]

it cant be. can it?

 

[Sleep Over Jack]

Yes, it got 4/5



There is also an interesting little chat with Steve Lillywhite, but if that person gets their scanner working they can post it, I'm tired after that frantic typing

 

[Roland of Gilead]

So it feels like an overcompensation when the record builds to the inevitable, unequivocal prayer of "Yahweh" - the glinting skyscraping guitars of "Pride" and "Where The Streets Have No Name" reactivated and ringing as Bono pleads, "Take this heart... and make it brave"..It's yearning, rousing and franly, it's u2 on autopilot.

Wow! I don't know what to say. U2 closing an album with faster track then they normally would and, yet, getting called "autopilot" for a sound that is their "classic coke" trademark. Personally, this review is telling me that Yahweh is going to be a standout on the album. I can't wait to hear it!

 

[Sleep Over Jack]

Its a much more intelligent review than the Q one, I think.

 

[Roland of Gilead]

I'm tired after that frantic typing

Thanks for all that Jack!

 

[U2_Guy]

 

[ZeroDude]

 

[TheFlyOnTheWall]

yeah, now you can go and sleep finally...

 

[Sleep Over Jack]

My pleasure! I know if I didn't have the magazine I'd want someone who did to type it up If the other fellow can't get the scanner working I'll type the Lillywhite interview as well.

 

[Sleep Over Jack]

yeah, now you can go and sleep finally...

 

[U2_Guy]

THIS RECORD WILL BE NOTHING LIKE ATYCLB!!! THANK GOD!!!

Troubled and honest!!!! Like AB and POP!!!

 

[Sleep Over Jack]

I'm trying to scan the article if I can get my poxy scanner to work!

Get that scanner working!!!

 

[SkeeK]

yeah. i quite liked that review. actually had some depth. now we just hope the album has way moore depth

 

[U2_Guy]

 

[ZeroDude]

 

[u2bonogirl]

theres so many reviews i dont know what to think
maybe i just wont
and wait till i can hear the damn thing for myself

 

[enajh2]

Da-dah!!

Alan

 

[U2_Guy]

 

[u2bonogirl]

yay!
thanks
as grumpy as i am i still like to read every little morsel

 

[purpleblackeye]

it is a well written and thoughtful review....

seem like there is a dark and melancholy aspect to this record, which i think was missing in ATYCLB. that is when U2 sounds best, i think...when a cloud hovers over their lives, so to speak, that is when the music shines and resonates the strongest.

 

[u2bonogirl]

I love it too when the band explores darker sides of things
like in AB
fidelity
love
hate
now theyre going back to that? rock on

 

[Sleep Over Jack]

*relieved he doesn't have to type the Lillywhite stuff*

 

[purpleblackeye]

interesting to read Lillywhite's take on ATYCLB....i can't disagree with him either.

 

[Sleep Over Jack]

Yes, he is quite critical isn't he? also he seems to be saying the band didn't enjoy working with Chris Thomas..I wonder what the 50-piece orchestra sessions sounded like. Also he says they recorded in 4 months, that is pretty fast for U2.

 

[tkramer]

This reveiw quells my fears of an
album made only to sell records.

I haven't heard it obviously, but
I'm getting the impression that it's
dark, it's somber, and it's not terrribly
friendly. But it still roars with passion
from beginning to end.

It's four 40 something men dealing
with the passage of time and what
happens when the ideologies of youth
are ravaged by personal and world tragedy.

I like it, sounds like their first album
about hurting from living life. New direction
for them thematically, if not politically.

Musically, I've heard it compared
to every album they have ever done,
which makes me wonder if a synthesis
album IS a new direction. Maybe it is.

Can't wait.

 

[U2_Guy]

"On the last one four of the songs were great, while the others varied from the good to not-so-good"

YES! Appears to me that they noticed that even though it was a huge success in sales (Eminem is huge on sales too and it sux) it wasn't a great album.

U2's back!