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dan_smee
ONE love, blood, life
United colours has its own vibe going on. AFN is great. Theres some interest in some of the others too
New Album Discussion 1 - Songs of..... - Unreasonable guitar album
- Thread starter dan_smee
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lazarus
Blue Crack Supplier
Can't wait til the rerelease gets Bono canceled for using the N-word, and they decide to pause all recording and touring plans
2030 it is.
2030 it is.
vertigo2024
Babyface
Ah yes, this is where Duran Duran filmed their video for Rio 43 years ago this May. Perhaps U2 will be filming a video here on a yacht with a body-painted woman in 2025.
trevgreg
Rock n' Roll Doggie
Fun fact... the outro of the Salomé (Zooromancer Remix) has a synth part that is quite similar to the intro for Save a Prayer. Bono has supposedly told the Duran boys that it was U2's tribute to them!
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dan_smee
ONE love, blood, life
I’ve been listening to Passengers since the announcement. I’ve always loved certain elements and just never listened to others. I think I just felt it was a bit inaccessible and odd - not in a good or interesting way.
It has been an album of two halves for me forever - the first half is wonderful listening. AFN and Slug are just gorgeous and belong in any conversation about U2’s best 90s work. The atmosphere and adventure, while still retaining the U2 dna was a work of genius. But the second half was a slog. Just hard work to get through without pressing skip. It’s probably why I never justified completing a vinyl collection with the crazy prices online. The RSD announcement to me just meant I’d grab it and wear out disc 1 and never touch disc 2. But my thoughts have changed and I think I get it now.
Ito Okashi is haunting and could soundtrack a scene in Twin Peaks,
One Minute Warning is probably just decades ahead of its time - it’s still a bit random-noisy, but it foreshadows some of the industrial pastiche of The Cooper Temple Clause,
Corpse is like a lounge tune in space - again it could have been on a Twin Peaks soundtrack,
I still don’t get Elvis - it’s funny but also just such a throwaway beside.
Plot 180 is probably a whole lot of nothing? Can someone enlighten me?
Theme from Swan is GORGEOUS. So simple, and it’s breathtaking. It was greyed out on Apple Music and I wouldn’t have listened since I bought the cd in about 1998.
Theme from LGN sounds like another offshoot of LWTSH. A bit simple, but fine to listen to.
Anyone else have a recent appreciation for Passengers?
It has been an album of two halves for me forever - the first half is wonderful listening. AFN and Slug are just gorgeous and belong in any conversation about U2’s best 90s work. The atmosphere and adventure, while still retaining the U2 dna was a work of genius. But the second half was a slog. Just hard work to get through without pressing skip. It’s probably why I never justified completing a vinyl collection with the crazy prices online. The RSD announcement to me just meant I’d grab it and wear out disc 1 and never touch disc 2. But my thoughts have changed and I think I get it now.
Ito Okashi is haunting and could soundtrack a scene in Twin Peaks,
One Minute Warning is probably just decades ahead of its time - it’s still a bit random-noisy, but it foreshadows some of the industrial pastiche of The Cooper Temple Clause,
Corpse is like a lounge tune in space - again it could have been on a Twin Peaks soundtrack,
I still don’t get Elvis - it’s funny but also just such a throwaway beside.
Plot 180 is probably a whole lot of nothing? Can someone enlighten me?
Theme from Swan is GORGEOUS. So simple, and it’s breathtaking. It was greyed out on Apple Music and I wouldn’t have listened since I bought the cd in about 1998.
Theme from LGN sounds like another offshoot of LWTSH. A bit simple, but fine to listen to.
Anyone else have a recent appreciation for Passengers?
United Colours is on my Halloween Playlist. Creeps me out and strikes me as one of the weirdest choices they could have made for track 1 at a time when the first track of an album really mattered a lot.
Also, I was just thinking about how the project feels like a progression from Zooropa (or a digression, perhaps), but not like a lead-in to POP.
Also, I was just thinking about how the project feels like a progression from Zooropa (or a digression, perhaps), but not like a lead-in to POP.
Larry and I do not agree on everything.
We agree on Passengers.
We agree on Passengers.
Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
I've always loved Passengers. Really relaxed and refreshing, and with two gorgeous U2 classics tucked in there.
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dan_smee
ONE love, blood, life
AFN, MS, YBR, Theme From Swan, Slug, Beach Sequence, United Colours. The core of a really interesting piece of work. My feeling til now has been the remainder (inc Theme From Swan before recently) has been too inaccessible and indulgent to be worthwhile along its value as an album less than the sum of those great parts should be. I now don’t feel that way.
Salome
you are what you is
No, you were right the first time around.
Lots of great stuff. Lots of filler that one can happily understand never made it to a U2 or Brian Eno album.
vertigo2024
Babyface
Wow, that was pretty cool. I looked it up and its originally from the Who's Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses Single.
PookaMacP
War Child
I had a similar epiphany about fifteen years ago. I loved the more straightforward stuff (Miss Sarajevo, Blue Room, etc) but one day it all just clicked. And it was Ito Okashi that made it click. A truly beautiful track.
Then comes One Minute Warning (the only song from the album to actually be used in a film, I think?) What a brilliant rhythm Eno created.
Plot 180 and Theme From Let's Go Native are probably the two most sexually charged pieces of music that U2 have ever been involved in.
Corpse is the only song I don't like from the second half. Even Elvis has its place.
In case anyone hasn't read it, Brian Eno's diary, A Year With Swollen Appendices, has some interesting insights into the recording process - including the battle (which Eno lost) to put it out as a U2 album.
Personally - and I know it's not everyone's cup of tea - this kind of experimentation is why I got into U2 in the first place (through Pop). It comes sixth in my list of favourite U2 records, better to my ears than anything they've made in the twenty-first century (except maybe half of NLOTH).
PookaMacP
War Child
I've always thought there is a direct line between Zoo Station, Zooropa, and United Colours. As opening tracks, they all sound like songs in motion: Zoo Station, literally so; Zooropa has that feeling of movement too ("I have no compass", etc, but also the way it sounds); and United Colours sounds like you're either on a high speed train or on a platform where they are idling and/or whizzing by.
lazarus
Blue Crack Supplier
Your Blue Room and Beach Sequence were used in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Beyond the Clouds, and Always Forever Now was in Michael Mann’s Heat.
The John Tree
War Child
I'm...not hearing that at all. Especially when If You Wear That Velvet Dress exists.
If you've ever seen Heat, with Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro, Plot 180 was used in a deleted scene. It fits the vibe of the film perfectly, which makes sense given the premise of the album.
Sadly I think the fans who love that experimentation are in the minority, even amongst the hardcore. It's alienating to them, which is why they've resorted to bland meat and potatoes nonsense like American Soul or Atomic City.
I first heard U2 when I was a little kid. My dad played Gloria over and over and over.
And each new album release, we'd listen to that. While I wasn't THAT into music....as I grew older I'd purposely stay home when the family would run some errands so I could listen to the albums myself.
AB came out when I was 11/12 years old....Zooropa as I hit the teens....so to have those albums in those formative years....yeah the experimentation was the factor for me too. Hearing songs that sounded like nothing else, even for U2.
While I loved and still love the post Pop albums....it is disappointing to know their days of trying to find the most crazy guitar sound or bass line are done.
And each new album release, we'd listen to that. While I wasn't THAT into music....as I grew older I'd purposely stay home when the family would run some errands so I could listen to the albums myself.
AB came out when I was 11/12 years old....Zooropa as I hit the teens....so to have those albums in those formative years....yeah the experimentation was the factor for me too. Hearing songs that sounded like nothing else, even for U2.
While I loved and still love the post Pop albums....it is disappointing to know their days of trying to find the most crazy guitar sound or bass line are done.
PookaMacP
War Child
Really? I suppose we all hear things differently. I hear a lot of sexual energy.
Maybe I was also influenced by reading Brian Eno's liner notes back in the 1990s.
The fictional film that Plot 180 is 'from' is called 'Hypnotize (Love Me Til Dawn)', which is about a journalist and and her driver and, Eno writes, 'the night they spend together, a vortex of apprehension, lust and finally terror'. That suggests to me that they thought it was pretty sexy too.
Similar for Theme From Let's Go Native. In Eno's liner notes for the 'film', he mentions that 'the touching romantic scene between the teenage boy (Barry Boedders) and the Bushmen girl (Clicky! Kang)- from which this music is taken - proved too close to the bone for the censor's office'. (As an aside, there's obvious echoes of the early 1970s Australian film, Walkabout, in that description.)
Velvet Dress? Well, of course. I wish they'd write something like that again.
PookaMacP
War Child
The thing I've learnt over the years is that the kinds of U2 fans we each are individually can be reliably defined by the moment we stepped on the train. I was in my teens when Pop came out and really into electronic music, so I loved the remixes, the experiments, etc - and probably always will favour that side of the band's spirit.
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dan_smee
ONE love, blood, life
It’s probably the thing that has grown the most is not so much the fondness for the songs lately (even though it has), but it’s the thought that the complete work makes more sense the more I immerse myself in it. I think everyone will have the tunes they think feel a bit out of such, but Corpse is probably one of the biggest growers for me of late. The sad Radiohead vibes seem like a direct inspiration for Thom Yorke to throw out the convention songwriting script and so far ahead of its time.
Plot 180 is also growing and I think my comment is already dated.
Passengers for me has always been an album I pull out every few years determined to try again and I skip around and struggle to even finish songs. I ultimately decide I like three of them and can’t be bothered with the rest. The whole thing was a swirly mess that I feel like I just zoomed out a bit more and saw that the swirls formed this beautiful, chaotic, but ultimately visionary picture.
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dan_smee
ONE love, blood, life
Given this acknowledgement of Passengers through the remaster and RSD release, and historically Larry not being on board with that project, I wonder if him being out of action has been the trigger for the long rumoured OST2? Could this be the Bono Edge Zeno project that sounds like sci fi folk?
namkcuR
ONE love, blood, life
I think the first ten tracks of Passengers are a great record. The last four drag. Elvis Ate America is a contender for "worst thing the band has ever done". The three instrumentals are interesting, but feel superfluous. I like Let's Go Native, but it just repeats over and over(and seems a bit similar to Zoo Station).
But the first ten tracks are something else.
Slug, Your Blue Room, Always Forever Now, and Miss Sarajevo are essential 90s U2.
A Different Kind Of Blue, Beach Sequence, and Corpse aren't necessarily tracks you'd queue up in isolation, but they work beautifully in the context of the record.
And One Minute Warning, while a bit tedious in getting there, builds up to a pretty epic last minute, and I love that last minute a lot.
I'm glad they're acknowledging the record, although it's not the first time; they've always given Miss Sarajevo a lot of love(a regular live slot on Vertigo and 360, a spot on the Best Of 1990-2000) and they even played Your Blue Room a small handful of times on 360.
As far as I'm concerned, U2 released four albums in the 90s, not three, and I'm happy to see Passengers get any attention.
But the first ten tracks are something else.
Slug, Your Blue Room, Always Forever Now, and Miss Sarajevo are essential 90s U2.
A Different Kind Of Blue, Beach Sequence, and Corpse aren't necessarily tracks you'd queue up in isolation, but they work beautifully in the context of the record.
And One Minute Warning, while a bit tedious in getting there, builds up to a pretty epic last minute, and I love that last minute a lot.
I'm glad they're acknowledging the record, although it's not the first time; they've always given Miss Sarajevo a lot of love(a regular live slot on Vertigo and 360, a spot on the Best Of 1990-2000) and they even played Your Blue Room a small handful of times on 360.
As far as I'm concerned, U2 released four albums in the 90s, not three, and I'm happy to see Passengers get any attention.
jphelmet
Refugee
Atomic City is somewhat of a throw-away track, but sounds like a masterpiece next to American Soul. American Soul is the dregs of their catalog. It's just awful in every way. I don't love Atomic City, but it has its place in their catalog. I love the more experimental side of U2, and prefer it for sure, but I still enjoy Atomic City. I don't think its a simple category of either/or.
I think Bono & Edge's chasing being great songwriters and then defining it by whether the songs can be played acoustically or stripped down is more to blame than alienating fans by experimentation. I still blame the failed Rick Rubin experiment as messing with their experimental nature of writing songs and sending them chasing the great songwriter's recognition. I still have a hard time listening to Rick Rubin's self-important babbling about how people pay him for his great taste, when in the back of my mind he killed the experimental nature of U2.
trevgreg
Rock n' Roll Doggie
I've never been big on the band's ambient tracks (or being different for the sake of being different). But I always had an appreciation for Beach Sequence. It works for what it is and can be a nice listen.
As for Passengers on the whole... I suppose it's more "meh" than not, for me. But I'll go back to stuff like Slug, Always Forever Now, and Theme from Let's Go Native from time to time. Your Blue Room is probably the high point, and Miss Sarajevo is fine. Unsurprisingly, those are probably the two times the album is the most listenable.
Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
I think they the only way U2 can continue — given the structure of their current lives — is to have the songs fairly set to go before the enter the studio. They don’t have the time (or, frankly, interest) to jam for hours while waiting for “one” to appear like they did when they were 30. Their lives are not being U2 anymore.
i think the idea that you have to like experimental u2 or more straight forward u2 is a load of malarky. there's room for both. one is not necessarily better than the other. sunday bloody sunday is direct and straight forward. i will follow. out of control. pride.
songs like one and stay - arguably the most popular off those two albums - are also the most straight forward and least experimental.
the idea that anything that isn't experimental isn't good is just one that i can't subscribe to - and obviously one that U2 doesn't, either.
that said - i do think they need to pick a lane. when they try to thread the needle - like on no line - the results are true dreck. this idea that somehow a song like unknown caller is better than some of the better tracks from SOI to Atomic City because, hey, at least they tried - is not something i can subscribe to in any way.
a song is good or it isn't. experimental doesn't make it good or bad. straight forward doesn't make it good or bad.
taste is also, obviously, subjective. there is no definitive yes or no answer to "is a song good."
other than boots. that song sucks.
songs like one and stay - arguably the most popular off those two albums - are also the most straight forward and least experimental.
the idea that anything that isn't experimental isn't good is just one that i can't subscribe to - and obviously one that U2 doesn't, either.
that said - i do think they need to pick a lane. when they try to thread the needle - like on no line - the results are true dreck. this idea that somehow a song like unknown caller is better than some of the better tracks from SOI to Atomic City because, hey, at least they tried - is not something i can subscribe to in any way.
a song is good or it isn't. experimental doesn't make it good or bad. straight forward doesn't make it good or bad.
taste is also, obviously, subjective. there is no definitive yes or no answer to "is a song good."
other than boots. that song sucks.
pacemaker
Refugee
Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
I guess this is the thread for general U2 discussion ...
We talk a lot about how "u2 sux! BoNEr doDgeS taXes!" feels pretty common online, especially amongst the youngs and the Apple thing inevitably comes up, so it was kind of nice to read a surprisingly large amount of comments defending them in what is a truly awful ranking of Super Bowl acts.
yes, the Apple is mentioned, but in their defense.
and i can see why most people put Prince at #1, but after reviewing both shows this past week, i would say Prince gave the better "performance," but the moment U2 created and pulled off exactly right -- in response to 9/11 of all things -- was a vastly more difficult thing to do.
We talk a lot about how "u2 sux! BoNEr doDgeS taXes!" feels pretty common online, especially amongst the youngs and the Apple thing inevitably comes up, so it was kind of nice to read a surprisingly large amount of comments defending them in what is a truly awful ranking of Super Bowl acts.
yes, the Apple is mentioned, but in their defense.
and i can see why most people put Prince at #1, but after reviewing both shows this past week, i would say Prince gave the better "performance," but the moment U2 created and pulled off exactly right -- in response to 9/11 of all things -- was a vastly more difficult thing to do.
jphelmet
Refugee
Definitely think this is true. I do think the Rubin episode sent them in this direction sooner.
Yes to all this. I love songs of theirs from every category.
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