NLOTH Album Reviews Pt 3

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Atomic was overproduced like a glam rock album. There were a few great songs but as a whole album it didn't resonate. Same with ATYCLB. BD, WO, and Kite were standouts. The rest blah.
 
it might have ruined what could have been a concept album, but i'm going to stand up for the middle 3 songs. they're superlative at what they do. a tour de force of craft. and they'll be great live. and that's what U2 is -- they are not Radiohead and they are not Pink Floyd, they are a vital live band who depend upon connection with their audience, otherwise they don't see the point. those three songs are there to wake up your body after you've been put in a trance for the first 4 songs. U2 is not an art project, it is very much a rock band.

that said, i am with you in that it would be interesting to see if they could keep up the hypnosis for the rest of the album, but it would be very un-U2 of them. and one of the reasons why i remain a mega-fan of the band is because they can give me the song "zooropa" or "moment of surrender" and the can then turn around and offer sweet, sure pop like "crazy tonight" or "walk on" that brings such a smile to my face. uplift does not have to be dumb. and that's one thing U2 has never been -- dumb. cheesy, yes. but not dumb.
 
Irvine511 said:
it might have ruined what could have been a concept album, but i'm going to stand up for the middle 3 songs. they're superlative at what they do. a tour de force of craft. and they'll be great live. and that's what U2 is -- they are not Radiohead and they are not Pink Floyd, they are a vital live band who depend upon connection with their audience, otherwise they don't see the point.
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Exactly this. A complete album of tracks similar to those three would drive me nuts but they work exceptionally well in the middle of this album. They're rocking/uplifting tunes that bridge the more contemplative start and finish. In my mind they are essential to the fact that this album is so easy to listen to from start to finish over and over.
 
Irvine511 said:
it might have ruined what could have been a concept album, but i'm going to stand up for the middle 3 songs. they're superlative at what they do. a tour de force of craft. and they'll be great live. and that's what U2 is -- they are not Radiohead and they are not Pink Floyd, they are a vital live band who depend upon connection with their audience, otherwise they don't see the point. those three songs are there to wake up your body after you've been put in a trance for the first 4 songs. U2 is not an art project, it is very much a rock band.

that said, i am with you in that it would be interesting to see if they could keep up the hypnosis for the rest of the album, but it would be very un-U2 of them. and one of the reasons why i remain a mega-fan of the band is because they can give me the song "zooropa" or "moment of surrender" and the can then turn around and offer sweet, sure pop like "crazy tonight" or "walk on" that brings such a smile to my face. uplift does not have to be dumb. and that's one thing U2 has never been -- dumb. cheesy, yes. but not dumb.
Click to expand...

The man(?) speaks the truth. :applaud:
 
SPIN MAGAZINE 3.5/5 STARS

"I’ll Go Crazy if I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight” reads like a bumper sticker on an SUV in a Wal-Mart parking lot -- a meek yelp of rebellion from a mortgage-stressed husband who dreams of creeping out for Nascar Bud Shootout night at Hooters. But on the song of that title from U2’s 12th studio album, Bono belts out the line with liberating glee -- like a giddy favela kid swinging onto an arm of Rio’s Christ the Redeemer statue. And we’re right there swinging along too, because when surging vox and chiming guitar and frisky beat congregate in the proper spirit, and when the foursome don’t sound like geezers defensively proclaiming their conceptual or aesthetic vigor, U2 still inspire flashes of elation, awe, and yes, hope like no other rock band.

And for most of us, that’s enough -- they created a sound, they shrewdly expanded and reinvented it, and they never became ghoulish, price-gouging buffoons like the Stones. But unlike 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind (the follow-up to 1997’s electronica-tweaked misfire Pop), No Line on the Horizon isn’t content to reaffirm U2’s iconic sonic virtues. With coproducers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois explicitly included in the songwriting, it’s an effort to tinker and rough up and refine anew their music’s essence -- with nobly sketchy results.

The title-track opener masses the Edge’s guitar and synth tracks into a dense whir and swirl amid gurning polyrhythms, giving Bono’s whoa-ohs a gritty context (as if he’s fronting a reanimated Killing Joke). “Magnificent” could’ve been a standard U2 secular hymn, but it’s constructed like a Sasha & Digweed trance anthem, with peak-hour drum programming and electronic swoosh. “Moment of Surrender,” a celebrity-at-the-crossroads soul ballad, is given an ambient gospel sweep that’s both haunted and joyful. More clumsily, “Stand Up Comedy” and “Get on Your Boots” adopt a self-conscious Zoo TV swagger that only exposes Bono’s dodgier wordplay.

And ultimately, No Line hinges on your appetite for, or patience with, the Nobel Peace Prize nominee’s lyrical approach. “I’m sick of Bono and I am him,” the singer admitted of his persona recently. So he abridges his first-person pronouncements, taking the point of view of a war correspondent on the moody diary “Cedars of Lebanon,” and of a suicidal man who thinks his phone is texting him instructions via computer commands (“Force quit and move to trash!”) on “Unknown Caller.” He imagines himself as invisible in “Moment of Surrender” and is a mostly phonetic presence during “Fez—Being Born.” It’s odd that the world’s most voluble one-named activist, who holds forth at will on, say, Larry King Live, seems unsure of how to express himself in a musical context. Maybe, like most rational adults, he’s lost some faith in pop or rock to transform the planet, but if you’re gonna be the leader of U2, you oughta embrace the pulpit.

So it's finally startling when the confident rumble of “Breathe” emerges. Bono sounds wired, paranoid, and defiantly sympathetic, ranting about an “Asian virus,” “juju man,” and “St. John the Divine.” Then, suddenly, his ambivalent anxiety recedes. And by simply being a rock star who’s singing his heart out, he depicts our ability to reenter the grind every day without cynicism as a near-heroic act. The edge’s concise, ascending solo sears the point home.

Sick of Bono? Maybe. Sick of U2? Not yet.

U2, 'No Line on the Horizon' (Interscope) | Spin Magazine Online
 
I agree Jeann.. This new cd is just pure bliss...I'm not just saying it because I'm a fan. From a musical standpoint this cd is plain awesome. Amen Amen Amen.................
 
Irvine511 said:
it might have ruined what could have been a concept album, but i'm going to stand up for the middle 3 songs. they're superlative at what they do. a tour de force of craft. and they'll be great live. and that's what U2 is -- they are not Radiohead and they are not Pink Floyd, they are a vital live band who depend upon connection with their audience, otherwise they don't see the point. those three songs are there to wake up your body after you've been put in a trance for the first 4 songs. U2 is not an art project, it is very much a rock band.

that said, i am with you in that it would be interesting to see if they could keep up the hypnosis for the rest of the album, but it would be very un-U2 of them. and one of the reasons why i remain a mega-fan of the band is because they can give me the song "zooropa" or "moment of surrender" and the can then turn around and offer sweet, sure pop like "crazy tonight" or "walk on" that brings such a smile to my face. uplift does not have to be dumb. and that's one thing U2 has never been -- dumb. cheesy, yes. but not dumb.
Click to expand...


well I have to say that I totally disagree.
On AB they sustained the atmosphere without dropping in a different song just because it will be good live... same with Zooropa, same with POP and I think same with UF and JT...
these two songs just remind me of Wild Honey or ABOY...forgettable throwaway that gets skipped after first ten days of listening to the album

Of course that is my opinion, but I just wanted to say that I was not convinced with your argument :) Because your argument is only true with 00's albums, which is not good in my eyes :)

cheers
 
Earnie Shavers said:
I would agree with that. And judging by the fact that the middle three tracks take up 50% of the vote on the ‘Worst Track’ poll, it appears the fans might send the right message.

I’ve got a bit of a nagging sense of what might have been. That we know they’ve shifted the album a bit, that they’ve got another one perhaps up their sleeve and that some of those songs could have been on this, does nag a little. I think the ‘pop-rock break’ in the middle is great, and it totally works, but I also have a feeling at the end of Unknown Caller – I just want to leap off the abyss right there. I’m right there about to leap, and I get pulled back. It’s fine, pulling back works, but I do hope that they didn’t have a leap there and that a little bit of 00s caution or last minute stage fright changed that around. There’s just a feeling there to me, that the first four songs so successfully pull you in, that they could grab your hand at that moment and take you anywhere, and everyone would follow, that they didn’t need to take that step back from the edge right there and then if they had the choice. Maybe they weren’t leaping off anyway, and I really hope that’s the case, because if they did, and did it well, it’s probably the difference between this album sitting below and/or matching their absolute highest heights.
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Excellent post. I love the album, but I've also wondered about the middle 3 and what could have been. Listening from track 8 through 4 (Fez-Being Born all the way through Unknown Caller with no break after Cedars) is absolutely incredible--a word that I simply cannot attach to the middle 3 songs. I think Boots is the only one of those 3 that really should have made the album. If we had 2 more mood pieces instead of SUC and CT, this album could have been scary good--probably their best ever.
 
Now Pop is going down in history as classic good U2 album?? :doh:

Sorry but i don't have a short memory and Pop is considered a low point in their careers.
 
I honestly like CT and boots, and personally think they fit in well with the album, SUC is still sinking in a little with me, but its getting there

:up:
 
bram said:
Excellent post. I love the album, but I've also wondered about the middle 3 and what could have been. Listening from track 8 through 4 (Fez-Being Born all the way through Unknown Caller with no break after Cedars) is absolutely incredible--a word that I simply cannot attach to the middle 3 songs. I think Boots is the only one of those 3 that really should have made the album. If we had 2 more mood pieces instead of SUC and CT, this album could have been scary good--probably their best ever.
Click to expand...

i completely agree with you. take out the middle 3, insert some more experimental pieces, and you could convert an excellent album into a lengendary one.

CT, SUC are fun songs but sound trivial next to the others. I think they were included to appease Jimmy Iovine and all those other record exec whores.
 
everyone's entitled to their own opinion, and i think U2 fans get defensive about Pop, but that's because it's kind of inarguable that the conventional wisdom is that the album was a dude and the tour had a shaky start and ended by playing to half empty stadiums.

people like us who pay attention can easily poke holes in this narrative, but that IS the narrative that surrounds the Pop album, like it or not.
 
Alright.. listen guys...

Listening to the album now for the first time. I wanted to be totally stress free, free from all the stress, problems, issues of this week of my life; It's Friday today .. I'm in love. I went absolutely mental when NLOTH started up. And I had my volume all the to the maximum logrithmic value and I was quite simply blasted away, jumped around, screamed, yelled, beat my chest like Tarzan, only because U2's new album is here! it has landed.

I'll keep you lot up to date with my status.
 
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