Here comes the press rollout...Time magazine cover

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I loved and still love NLOTH and thought most of the songs worked fine live, at least at the shows I went to. Boots, NLOTH, Magnificent and the crazy Crazy remix worked fine. I applaud U2 for deciding to play so many songs from a new album, because usually stadium bands settle for what stadium audiences expect from them, which is mostly a greatest hits show.

I hated to see U2 drop most of these NLOTH songs later on the tour.

Well, maybe except Unknown Caller which was indeed embarrassing, and Breathe wasn't a good choice for an opener. I disagree with Larry, guess what, and I think it's interesting to see so many here coming out now saying NLOTH was bad when it was very much appreciated back in 2009.

I like, however, what Larry has to say here:

U2 Defiant Over Album Release Furore | Contactmusic.com
 
You know what's more annoying than people saying it's bad now?

People being awfully defensive about liking it.
 
Headache in a Suitcase said:
Yea. You loved the Beatles.

How many wings records did you own?
Click to expand...

I didn't have any, i was 9 i didn't have hardly any albums. However, my Dad had several of them and he played them for me when he used to make leather belts and purses and stuff out in the garage. I used to hang out in the garage with my Dad because he was cool and i listened to his records with him.

He bought me John Lennon's 'Double Fantasy' album when it came out. Also i believe he had 'mind games' and 'imagine', and eventually he bought me 'rock n roll' on casette, as it was the "new thing" and records were sort of fading out.

I used to watch the Beatles cartoons on TV when i was eating breakfast and getting ready for school. One morning Dad came in and pointed at the John Lennon cartoon character, and he told me that Lennon had been shot the night before.

Any more questions, junior?
 
djerdap said:
No they didn't, apart from Boots (ironically enough) and the title track. That was what probably sealed the fate of the record in their eyes. If anything, it was the first record that was truly a failure as far as live performances are concerned. They really didn't work, especially in those stadiums. They went like a dead fart in those 2009 concerts where they played four songs from it in the beginning. The embarrassing attempt to turn Unknown Caller into some big sing-along represents the whole situation quite nicely.
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Agree 100% and even the title track and Boots didn't go over that well. There was no excitement for the new songs.

With ATYCLB, Beautiful Day and Elevation were huge audience energizes and people sang along from day one.
With Bomb, Vertigo & COBL were huge audience energizes.
With NLOTH, I would argue the only song that got the crowd going slightly was the Crazy remix but that was hit or miss

Unknown Caller was a massive dud and soooooo boring live.


Sent from my iPad using U2 Interference
 
djerdap said:
You know what's more annoying than people saying it's bad now?

People being awfully defensive about liking it.
Click to expand...


I loved nloth when it came out but the true judgement for an album is time and im afraid i hardly listen to any tracks off it now.

I like nloth,mos and breathe. I even like boots live.

Its defo near the bottom of the pile for me
 
The mojo interview does mention nloth and it gets bashed to hell. I cant remember if its just larry. Sounds like its going to be u2's uglying duckling in the future
 
LemonMelon said:
Larry disowning artistically worthwhile tracks like Fez and Cedars is probably the least surprising thing I'll hear all week.
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He hated the album making process. It would appear, so did Adam.

"No Line was f***ing miserable. A miserable experience. From beginning to middle to end, it just didn't work. Brian and Danny were on board and credited as songwriters - and this is with respect to them - but that's an impossible scenario.You can't have four people in a band plus two extra songwriters who are also producers. It's not possible. Perhaps we should have made an obscure record. Maybe it would have been a great obscure record."

Clayton added:

"It wasn't an easy fit. We disappeared up our own ar*e in a way. I grieved the train wreck of certain directions we went in."
 
CosmoKramer said:
Agree 100% and even the title track and Boots didn't go over that well. There was no excitement for the new songs.

With ATYCLB, Beautiful Day and Elevation were huge audience energizes and people sang along from day one.
With Bomb, Vertigo & COBL were huge audience energizes.
With NLOTH, I would argue the only song that got the crowd going slightly was the Crazy remix but that was hit or miss

Unknown Caller was a massive dud and soooooo boring live.


Sent from my iPad using U2 Interference
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Boots went down fine, as did Crazy, NLOTH and Magnificent.

Breathe maybe not as an opener but not a miss as a live song as such. I didn't mind MOS but could see how it would be too slow for some, even in a closer spot.

Unknown Caller was the weak link.
 
It will be interesting which words they'll be using to bash SOI in the not so far away future because it didn't turn out the success they expected it to. With all respect for U2, but that kind of bashing your own work sucks big time. If you don't feel it, don't release it. What took them more than four years to record? I remember them gushing about MOS as if it was the second coming (and it was and still is widely loved and appreciated among fans). I loved it live, it was magic and I'd love to see it brought back again live, which will not happen.

I'm glad at least Bono is still liking the album.

I don't understand what Larry means with the album not being "obscure". To me, NLOTH is mostly an obscure record. I wish they'd gone all the way and threw out the middle three. NLOTH was critically acclaimed, many fans and journalists acknowledged that U2 were being (or at least trying to be) brave again, taking risks, going into a more experimental direction. I think the album has its weak points, but it surely does not deserve to be bashed like that by the band or certain band members.
 
My take on it is "false advertisement".

Pop: You advertise Discotheque and deliver Mofo, Please and Velvet Dress. The people who got excited by the advertisement don't understand the product, and the people who would've loved the product gets confused by the advertisement.

No Line: You advertise Boots and Crazy Tonight and deliver MoS and Fez. In case anyone accidentally got excited by the advertisement, they wouldn't understand the product, and the people who would've loved the product got confused by the advertisement.

No Line is a good record, but a bad release.
 
last unicorn said:
I wonder if Larry thought that way if the album was more of a commercial success.
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By all accounts none of the band members really enjoyed making AB, yet due to its huge success all of them appear to see it as kind of painful process they had to go through. I guess they feel that all the hardship is worth it if it ultimately pays off.

NLOTH commits the cardinal sin of being miserable to make, spawning no hit single and consequently denting the bands reputation. Its probably hard to derive anything positive from that particular campaign.

One things for sure, I think we can guarantee that any future live performances of those songs will be very few and far between indeed.
 
ClaytonsKitten said:
Would someone in the UK be willing to look into buying/shipping a copy of MOJO to the US? According to their site, it'd cost me nearly $25 in US dollars to order and ship myself. I'm thinking it HAS to be cheaper to have someone from interference do it. (Can paypal the funds.) :hmm:

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using U2 Interference mobile app
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CK, you can get MOJO at Barnes & Noble and Books A Million here in the states and it comes w/ a free CD. I think it's $9.95.

You can also read it online here - http://www.scribd.com/doc/248479189/U2-MOJO-Magazine-January-2015-Edition-Issue-254
 
ImNotSleeping said:
CK, you can get MOJO at Barnes & Noble and Books A Million here in the states and it comes w/ a free CD. I think it's $9.95.

You can also read it online here - http://www.scribd.com/doc/248479189/U2-MOJO-Magazine-January-2015-Edition-Issue-254
Click to expand...

Oooh I'll call my BAM then and see if they're carrying it. Our closest B&N is about 40mins or so away.
(I've read the scans on FB, I just want to add it to the U2 collection. I've got the RS cover, the SPIN collector's edition, and the Q mag already. The US cover of Time wasnt U2 :( )
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U2girl said:
He hated the album making process. It would appear, so did Adam.

"No Line was f***ing miserable. A miserable experience. From beginning to middle to end, it just didn't work. Brian and Danny were on board and credited as songwriters - and this is with respect to them - but that's an impossible scenario.You can't have four people in a band plus two extra songwriters who are also producers. It's not possible. Perhaps we should have made an obscure record. Maybe it would have been a great obscure record."
"
Click to expand...

Funny thing is, as I recall it was surprisingly Larry's idea to go somewhere like Morocco and just jam and make music and not worry about where they were going with it.

I didn't find a source for that yet, but I'm pretty sure it's true. I did find this quote from Larry earlier in the NLOTH sessions:

"It's the first time we've worked with Brian and Dan in a purely songwriting capacity," Larry said. "So it's very different, quite experimental and kind of liberating because of that..."

I guess it wasn't so liberating after all.
 
U2loverforever said:
NLOTH: would someone tell me what that even means.


Sent from my iPad using U2 Interference Joanne
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030209_nloth_2.jpg
 
I listened to NLOTH the other day for the first time in quite a while and was reminded that MOS placed as the third track was a bit jarring even to this day. So yeah, the songs could have been sequenced better.
 
Huh, I think it's a very good sequence. MOS into UC is perfect. Breathe could be in a different spot and SUC into Fez is terrible, but I'm pleased with the sequencing for the most part.
 
david said:
I listened to NLOTH the other day for the first time in quite a while and was reminded that MOS placed as the third track was a bit jarring even to this day. So yeah, the songs could have been sequenced better.
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For me the problem is not that it's located as 3rd, but that it's between Magnificent (which I find a bit boring) and UC (which is another slow song).

LemonMelon said:
Huh, I think it's a very good sequence. MOS into UC is perfect. Breathe could be in a different spot and SUC into Fez is terrible, but I'm pleased with the sequencing for the most part.
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MoS is 7.5 minutes long and UC is 6, both are slow songs, is great that the majority of people seem to like those songs back to back, but I do find them a bit too much.
If you accept any suggestions about Breathe and Fez...

ImNotSleeping said:
I skip MOS 75% of the time. It doesn't belong there to me, but then I'm unsure where it does belong.
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If you accept any suggestions...

I placed MOS between Crazy Tonight and No Line, both songs are a bit more uplifting/fast paced than Magnificent and UC and that lets MoS to shine more on its own:

1. Fez/BB (it's a good opener)
2. Crazy Tonight
3. Moment of Surrender
4. No Line on the Horizon
5. Breathe
6. Unknown Caller

For the same reason, UC sounds works better between Breathe and Boots, as opposed between MoS and Crazy Tonight. UC leading into Boots works nice.
And after listening to Fez, Mos, No Line, Breathe and UC, I don't mind listening to the 2 "evil" songs at all:

7. Boots
8. Stand Up
9. White as Snow
10. Magnificent (for me, Magnificent works a lot better in this spot, right before the closer instead of pushing it at the beginning sucking all the energy of No Line).
11. Cedars of Lebanon
 
Moment of Surrender -> Unknown Caller makes sense because both songs involve the same lyrical character.


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digitize said:
Moment of Surrender -> Unknown Caller makes sense because both songs involve the same lyrical character.
Click to expand...

They involve the same character and I understand why that makes sense.

But for me... I would agree if I was reading them but not listening to them.

Listening to both songs back to back, almost 14 minutes of it, it's too much. And musically they're not as stimulating as Echoes or Dogs to keep me interested in them for that long.

And involving the same character, while it makes sense, hardly is a reason to being forced to have them back to back.
It implies that we can't have back to back songs unless they involve the same character and it implies that using similar themes or characters at different moments in an album doesn't make sense.
 
Fez into Crazy Tonight? Stand Up Comedy into White As Snow? That only emphasizes the album's tonal inconsistency. I guess we just disagree on what a good transition constitutes.

I wouldn't do much with the sequencing, honestly. Just move a couple of things around:

1. Fez-Being Born
2. NLOTH
3. Magnificent
4. MOS
5. Unknown Caller
6. Crazy Tonight
7. GOYB
8. Stand Up Comedy
9. Breathe
10. White As Snow
11. Cedars of Lebanon

Although, if I had my way, Soon and Winter would be in there at the expense of CT, GOYB and SUC.
 
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