That and it's pretty hard to generally describe anything music-wise unless it's absolutely in some sort of box. Maybe something along the lines of "acoustic guitar and vocals," which kind of shows you hard it would be to define anything beyond that without trying to make some sort of genre fit onto it. And a lot of those definitions will depend on the viewpoint of the person saying what it sounds like.
"Punk rock on Venus" and "Edge on fire" really never drove me nuts, mostly because any off the cuff remarks are going to be just that. All I hear from those things is Bono saying that he heard some guitar riffs or effects that sounded really cool to him on a state-of-the-art studio sound system - or got him excited as a friend and musician to hear and maybe having something inspiring to write to. Not surprising! And of course, that's long before fitting anything sounding like that into an actual song, plus mixing it properly with vocals, bass-drums and synths or whatever else along side it. Odds are pretty good that it's not going to jump out at me on, say, a pair of Edifier speakers or a car system as much as it would in its original form inside a million-dollar studio!
When I hear "sci-fi Irish folk," I'm gathering that they must have a demo or three with Eno that have prominent synths with acoustic guitars and maybe some dramatic vocals or toplining from Bono (heck, maybe something along the lines of what he used at the Sphere with the Sean-nós phrasing?). And of course, that's subject to change over time or pretty quickly!
The perspective kind of gets lost, but every band has some form of this going on. One I think about is Keith Richards and people in the Rolling Stones saying how the original form of "Start Me Up" was "reggae-infused" or their attempt at a reggae song. Below is one recent time where Keith expanded upon it...
“The story here is the miracle that we ever found that track," Richards told Guitar Player. "I was convinced, and I think Mick was, that it was definitely a reggae song.
"We did it in 38 takes – ‘Start me up. Yeah, man, cool. You know, you know, Jah Rastafari.’
"And it didn’t make it. And somewhere in the middle of a break, just to break the tension, Charlie and I hit the rock and roll version. And right after that we went straight back to reggae.
Over the years, an early version of the demo version apparently leaked. And a version of it was also later released by the Stones with some of the final versions of the vocal thrown on, a la the "Kindergarten" versions of Achtung Baby in 2011. Now whether any of those were the actual version of the band's "reggae" attempt at Start Me Up still seem up for debate. But with the quotes describing that as such being repeated over the years, some of the fan comments about it on YouTube sound awfully familiar!
- Reggae as played by people who don’t know reggae
- On what planet is this "reggae"? Lmfao!
- Not one single thing "reggae" about this early Start Me Up demo. Not the beat, not the groove, not the bass, not the guitar, not the vocals. Nothing at all.
- In what way is this reggae?
- This isn't reggae at all. Just a studio jam trying to develop an idea.
- This got all kinda groove, but this ain't reggae.
- Their style got on their way, maybe they were trying to get a reggae sound, but ended with a pure Rolling Stone sound.
Alas, the life of being a music fan!
