Umm opening with 4 straight NLOTH tracks and playing 7 total in a stadium tour doesn't scream of nostalgia act. I would say that the tour lingering into 2011 and thus extending into the 20 year anniversary period for AB has a lot more to do with the delay because of Bono's back and their lack of decision on a new direction. If they were being a nostalgia act songs like Bullet the Blue Sky wouldn't have been absent and NYD, Pride, AIWIY, Bad, etc. would have been played every night.
Correct.
They're still missing the quality associated with every nostalgia act out there(Police, AC/DC, etc).
Who else has played 7 songs from their latest album in a stadium that we can think of?
Yes, U2 has a great back catalog and I'd much rather see them admit that and play it instead of say, Unknown Caller or a crappy remix of Magnificent, but they still try to make every release relevant and succeed at it.
Of course, NLOTH is a relative failure for U2, but relative is the key word there.
What nostalgia act can say their latest album was #1 in 30 countries?
What notalgia act innovates with their stage sets the way U2 does?
U2 has had no line up changes, no additional musicians added and no desire to put out an album merely as an excuse to tour.
Even Better Than The Real Thing/I Will Follow(The Fly lately) aren't there for lack of new stuff or for nostalgia's sake, their there, I would think and hope, because they're a kick ass 1-2 punch and work slighly better than Breathe and No Line!