Agreed, Nick -- I feel like you could put BD beside GOOYOW and see exactly where modern-day Bono has slid more toward making ill-phrased "statements" and away from anything like poetic suggestiveness.
I dunno, I'd put the lyrics of these two songs at fairly even territory.
BD:
The heart is a bloom
Shoots up through the stony ground
There's no room
No space to rent in this town
You're out of luck
And the reason that you had to care
The traffic is stuck
And you're not moving anywhere
You thought you'd found a friend
To take you out of this place
Someone you could lend a hand
In return for grace
Get Out:
Love hurts. Now you’re the girl that’s left with no words
Your heart’s a balloon, but then it bursts
It doesn’t take a cannon just to pin your skins – no covering
And resistance, love has got to fight for its existence
The enemy is armies of assistance (???)
The amorous, the glamorous, a kiss, a fist – Listen to this…
The weakest part to me in Get Out is the:
She had a plan until she got a smack in the mouth and it all went south...
But not any worse to me than the Bedouin fires and tuna fleets bit in BD...
I agree that the lyrical directness and even music directness that the band has adapted to, often leaves me wanting something more. But I think ATYCLB was just as bad as anything since. SOI was a breath of fresh air in some ways, cause things seemed to flow better.
I still have solid hopes for this album. Right now it has me questioning if it will be SOI level for me. But there are a lot of songs left to hear.