I few clarifications:
By "experimental" I don't mean re-inventing the wheel(s) of music. I simply mean music that comes from somewhere you haven't really been. Maybe this quote by Bono (during the making of ATYCLB) will shed a little light: Paraphrasing: "With our previous records, it always felt like we were pushing something up that mountainside, whereas on this record [ATYCLB], it feels like we're on the other side of the mountain, running after it. It's the easiest record we've ever had to make..."
What I get from this quote, is that ATYCLB was a formulation of everything the band learned up to that point in time -- it was a culmination of the
practical side of their musical education, the result of where they had been, a vantage point where they could sit back and understand how and why, musically, they arrived at that particular place (album) in time. That is why, it took the least effort. Nothing terribly new had to be created. Just simple (and mostly outstanding) songcraft.
I also want to reiterate that I do think U2 did experiment on ATYCLB to some extent. They experimented with conventional pop song structure and style -- which is why it doesn't seem very new, because it isn't. When my friend first heard 'Stuck In A Moment', he said he'd sworn he'd heard it before, and I said, "Well, that's probably because you have." There are millions of songs with that type of structure. Thinking off-hand, even the melody of 'Stuck' is similar to at least one song ('People Get Ready' by Curitis Mayfield). But that's really besides the point: U2 experimented with the "pop" song, on ATYCLB -- and that's great. They've done it before, but now they've got a whole album full of them.
My initial point was that in the past, their music
sounded experimental, regardless of whether it actually was or not (although I do believe it was). That is because no other band was making "pop" music that sounded quite like that. And that's really the result of where U2 came from, musically -- which was from practically nowhere. They came from an island, and not just in a geographical sense, but also, because of this, in a musical one. (I think isolation may sometimes bring the best art.) They weren't influenced, relatively speaking anyway, from the contemorary music scene of the early 80s. They never sounded like their contemporaries, actually. When new wave and synth key-board music was going huge, U2 came out and declared
WAR (so to speak), and the result was a badly needed breath of fresh air in a land of stagnently filled wall-paper music. U2 has always shaken up the musical landscape.
Now, enter ATYCLB. We have an album that doesn't sound like everything else in the mainstream (in terms of songwriting), but sounds like something that was
once mainstream -- but not in the 80s, but instead, the 60s and 70s (yet contemporized through its delightful production). And that's not a bad thing. I personally think it's great. I love Van Morrison and Otis Redding and The Beatles, etc. I love them all. I think it's great U2 made an album that tries to pick the favourites and put them all together into a contempory feel. It's also a very U2 record, in that it's
emotionally U2, no question. No other band could have made ATYCLB, but U2. (Why do I feel I must defend ATYCLB? -- That's not the point at all.)
Someone said that U2 has never been experimental. It depends which definition you are using. I personally believe that if at anytime you are stretching out into any kind of sound or structure you are unfamiliar with, you are then "experimenting". So, like I said, U2 did experiment on ATYCLB, but not in the same way they usually have. This time, they did so while also reaching back.
Achtung Baby, for example, was, really, not that experimental in terms of songwriting. They're all big pop songs, even 'The Fly' -- which is a HUGE pop song. But the sonics used on that album weren't mainstream at the time. It is, at times, abrasive in a manner that gnaws at the ears -- yet it is within that "gnaw," that the melody detangles in a strangely beautiful way. And that, to me, is experimentation -- creating something you didn't know about out of something you did know about.
I would like the next album to do that, but only if U2 does, too. (And I believe they do.
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The Tempest
