SOE FAN + industry reviews only

[purpleoscar]

It's not ageism. It's the natural course of things.

That sounds even more scary, like Darwin.

 

[purpleoscar]

Of course it will all change when members die, or when they retire. Then the love will return.

"They love love you
Kill kill you
And then they love you again" Joan of Arc - Arcade Fire

Lots of "Reflekting" and Leveling. U2 is in the Kill Me! part of the song.

 

[akann]

This is the headline on NME's website.

"Liam Gallagher announced as Godlike Genius at the VO5 NME Awards 2018"

Says it all really.

 

[purpleoscar]

Oh well I'll just listen to The Showman and enjoy myself.

 

[BoyOnTheHorizon]

Hey kids

Remember when you all made fun of the Rolling Stones when they released Voodoo Lounge and Bridges To Babylon?

Yea. Now you know how it feels.

Relax, have a glass of wine that these young whipper snappers can't even afford, and don't give a turkey about what some douche who dictates to you what the "exciting music" is says.

But remember, you were once that douche.

I remember when both os those albums came out, i liked them both, and although i prefer Bridges, Voodoo Lounge was specially well accpeted expect by some trendy people that were still thinking grunge was the only kind of music that was worth listening to. Love is strong, Out of tears and Anybody seen my baby were real worldwide hits. They suddnely became relevant again. And cool. And grunge simply died.

I still listen to Bridges...

 

[Silex]

We live in a societies now that value cynicism and flat out hate. No one has time for joy, for peace, for love. Instead it's "Oh, i wonder what skeletons they have" or "Who the fuck does he/she think they are preaching about kindness??? Fuck you!"

The internet has given rise to this mentality, where it feels good to put others down.

John Lennon would not survive in this world.
Marvin Gaye wouldn't either.

Hell, Jesus Christ wouldn't stand a chance with all his talk about compassion, service to others, and love.

U2 come from a different era, their influences are obviously from another time. So they are an easy target because Bono puts his heart on his sleeve and is a loud mouth. So it's easy to hate him more when it does come out that he's made an investing mistake, or the U2 business dodges some Irish Taxes.....

Most negative reviews focus on this stuff. It's sad, but just ignore it.

At least with some of the reviews that aren't 100% positive, they've been a little more fair. I've been a U2 fan all my life, and my initial review of the album would be 4 stars. It could move up to 5, or down to 3 over time depending on how this album works within the framework of my life.

The only thing I knock the album for is the songs feel a little too short and neat for U2. Extend a few of the songs out, and I think I could push it closer to the 5

Those are excellent points. I'm just not sure it is the internet that causes or produces this mentality, or if it allows it to spread and be present almost everywhere. Jesus Christ was killed for his beliefs, ideas and actions towards love and the kinship of human beings, ca. 2000 years ago. As you pointed out, it is not far fetched to assume he could face a simmilar end in modern times.

About reviews, it's easy to discriminate between fair reviewers, who judge the album objectivelly and impartially in the best of their ability, from unfair reviewers, who write a lot about stuff other than music, mostly bashing Bono or the band in some manner, never forgeting the immense first-world problem that was the SOI giveaway. It is quite ridicullous actually... these bitter twats probably know shit about music, or anything for that matter. The best thing to ever happen them is to be completelly ignored.

 

[HansaTonImbiss]

Of course it will all change when members die, or when they retire. Then the love will return.

"They love love you
Kill kill you
And then they love you again" Joan of Arc - Arcade Fire

Yep. Maybe in 20 years should this get reissued these hack jobs will listen to the album with open, unjaded ears. And perhaps then we'll know the true score. Unless they're busy reviewing a new Arby's or something (looking at you, Pang).

U2 and particularly Bono have done themselves a disservice at times by having an opinion on everything, and by embracing some fairly hated people (mostly politicians and moguls). But that's not about the music. That's about the court of public opinion. And those two things, to a good reviewer, stay separate. Christgau didn't rail against Bowie's drug habit while evaluating "Station to Station", he observed the music and made a call with a judging ear, external forces or factors staying an afterthought. People didn't spend half of a review of "Automatic for the People" lambasting the stupidity of Shiny, Happy People or speculating about Michael Stipe's sexual orientation. But that's fine and dandy now. I blame the internet in the age of "hot takes". Some of these people should never have an opinion published, are afraid to form one on their own, or are saying things purely for circus. Too bad- great reviews, when done well, can be wonderful timepieces for an artist and art in general.

 

[Airseven]

The album is a pleasant surprise given the recent standard set by the band. While better than the last two albums, it’s weighed down again by the lack of a lead single. It’ll be carried by the deeper cuts which aren’t a priority for reviewers. Negative reviews are both expected and in a lot of ways justified. U2 continues to undermine themselves by pining for relevance with these 3 minute neutered pop tunes.

 

[Sickly Vulpine]

CD: U2 – Songs of Experience

Never heard of this outlet before. Anyway, mixed with negative leanings. I dunno, I'm pretty tired after reading a lot of reviews today.

 

[CosmoKramer]

Hey kids

Remember when you all made fun of the Rolling Stones when they released Voodoo Lounge and Bridges To Babylon?

Yea. Now you know how it feels.

Relax, have a glass of wine that these young whipper snappers can't even afford, and don't give a turkey about what some douche who dictates to you what the "exciting music" is says.

But remember, you were once that douche.

But but but....there is a website that aggregates reviews and if they tell me it’s bad then it’s bad. In fact this is 2017 and it’s not just reviews from the New York or LA Times that matter, now the average 24 year old blogger with a man bun and who works as a part time food critic can tell me if I should like an album or not!

 

[purpleblackeye]

Bands like The Killers, Coldplay, and Arcade Fire get a pass for releasing absolute drivel for their latest albums. Arcade Fire’s newest album in particular was just horrendous. I don’t remember any of those bands getting hit with such pessimistic and cynical reviews. And Martin, Flowers and Butler are each opinionated, heart on their sleeve fools in their own way too.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Ok so here's a review that I'd love to get everyone's opinion on before providing the source...

There are songs that are better, there are songs that are worse, there are songs that'll become your favorites and others you'll probably lift the needle for when their time is due. But in the end,SONGS OF EXPERIENCEspends its four sides shading the same song in as many variations, and if on the one hand they prove the group's eternal constancy and appeal, it's on the other that you can leave the album and still feel vaguely unsatisfied, not quite brought to the peaks that this band of bands has always held out as a special prize in the past.

SONGS OF EXPERIENCEappears to take up whereSONGS OF INNOCENCEleft off, with U2 attempting to deal with their problems and once again slightly missing the mark. They've progressed to the other side of the extreme, wiping out one set of solutions only to be confronted with another. With few exceptions, this has meant that they've stuck close to home, doing the sort of things that come naturally, not stepping out of the realm in which they feel most comfortable. Undeniably it makes for some fine music, and it surely is a good sign to see them recording so prolifically again; but I still think that the great U2 album of their mature period is yet to come. Hopefully,SONGS OF EXPERIENCE will give them the solid footing they need to open up, and with a little horizon-expanding (perhaps honed by a few months on the road), they might even deliver it to us the next time around.

Thoughts?

 

[david]

Bands like The Killers, Coldplay, and Arcade Fire get a pass for releasing absolute drivel for their latest albums. Arcade Fire’s newest album in particular was just horrendous. I don’t remember any of those bands getting hit with such pessimistic and cynical reviews. And Martin, Flowers and Butler are each opinionated, heart on their sleeve fools in their own way too.

Pitchfork ripped Arcade Fire’s newest album.

 

[HansaTonImbiss]

Pitchfork ripped Arcade Fire’s newest album.

I actually cringed when I heard "Everything Now". Like ABBA in a blender with "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You", dumped into an 80s synthesizer. Garbage.

And I really like Arcade Fire.

 

[purpleoscar]

Ok so here's a review that I'd love to get everyone's opinion on before providing the source...



Thoughts?

A Rolling Stone album review?


EDIT: LOL I guessed right!

 

[hasin73]

I noticed that the glowing AP review wasn’t on there. Surely that should be counted by Metacritic shouldn’t it? That’s the review more Americans will read than any other.

Also, we know the Rolling Stone review will help its current score.

May be Metacritic is also biased. The moderator on that site also may be a Bono-hater. You never know. Otherwise, there is no reason to not put the AP review there yet when that review is published so early.

 

[CosmoKramer]

May be Metacritic is also biased. The moderator on that site also may be a Bono-hater. You never know. Otherwise, there is no reason to not put the AP review there yet when that review is published so early.

Don’t take it too seriously...

The lowest score on the site is a 33 from a food critic....that’s not a joke, that’s real life. A food critic gave a review of the U2 album and it made it on this site.

In other news, I hear Grimace and the hamburgler love the album!

 

[Psychobabble]

I'm under the impression now though u2 could release an album as good as the Joshua tree and achtung baby combined and it still wouldn't be accepted with certain outlets. It's cool to diss u2 . That's the way it is now and has been since 2006. Between 2000-2005 u2 were seen as a cool band and they got great reviews from these outlets. The nme even gave them godlike genius awards. It's just the way it is now I suppose

Agreed. Most great bands are lucky to have a decade of good material. Throw out everything they have done since Zooropa that you didn't think was very good and you would still have one or two brilliant albums.

For some reason there are people who think if this album isn't Joshua or Achtung then it is crap and beneath them. I'd be happy to have any new music from this band. Having an album that sounds this good at this point in their career is a wonder that perhaps not everyone can appreciate.

 

[Psychobabble]

"After all these years, there's simply too much baggage for U2 and any new music they make, and lightening the load seems moot at this point."
U2, 'Songs of Experience': Album Review

That about sums up the problem and the reason that so many music critics (and some people) will dismiss anything they put out now.

 

[HansaTonImbiss]

"After all these years, there's simply too much baggage for U2 and any new music they make, and lightening the load seems moot at this point."
U2, 'Songs of Experience': Album Review

That about sums up the problem and the reason that so many music critics (and some people) will dismiss anything they put out now.

Yeah so let's just give up and hate it automatically. That's easier than keeping an open mind. Makes sense.

I don't get these people, and it sadly extends beyond music.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

A Rolling Stone album review?


EDIT: LOL I guessed right!

It is indeed a review from Rolling Stone...

 

[Psychobabble]

Review from a self-proclaimed U2 tatoo'ed fan:

a review of U2's Songs of Experience — Jonathan Martin

 

[revolver]

It is indeed a review from Rolling Stone...

So where's the rest of it?...and why does it sound so reserved?

 

[purpleoscar]

I meant the Rollingstones. I searched it.

Exile on Main Street - Rolling Stone

 

[revolver]

Hahaha, oh yeah. Great find!

 

[Psychobabble]

"Guitarist The Edge says he think the most "unique" aspect of 'Songs of Experience' - their 67th studio album - and the band in general, is that not many groups have made so much music with the original line-up intact." U2 announce one-off live Amazon Music experience | Entertainment | myheraldreview.com

ummmmmm....did I miss some albums?

 

[LemonMelon]

May be Metacritic is also biased. The moderator on that site also may be a Bono-hater. You never know. Otherwise, there is no reason to not put the AP review there yet when that review is published so early.

You mean WaPo's review? Their music reviews are never included in the score aggregate, only their movie reviews. Their coverage isn't wide enough for that medium.

 

[cseggleton]

Philadelphia Enquirere 2.5 Stars
http://www.philly.com/philly/entert...rience-review-tour-philadelphia-20171129.htmlHas there ever been a band that feels as desperate a need to matter as U2?

The Irish rock superstars, whose 14th album, Songs of Experience, comes out Friday are still wildly successful when it comes to selling concert tickets. Bono and the boys packed Lincoln Financial Field on their Joshua Tree redux tour this year, and they’ll be in South Philadelphia to play the Wells Fargo Center on June 13 and 14.

But filling arenas and stadiums on the basis of a career’s worth of much-loved songs is a qualitatively different achievement from continuing to make new music that speaks to the here and now.

That’s what U2 has so earnestly aimed to do for decades, including in the 1990s, when they smartly positioned themselves as anti-earnest on a series of glitzy albums starting with 1991’s masterwork Achtung, Baby!

Don’t knock them for it. Sure, even his most ardent fans must get sick and tired of the lead singer, the most messianic frontman in the history of rock and roll, whose save-the-world hubris was made manifest in the rollout of the 2014 album Songs of Innocence, which was placed in the music library of iTunes users throughout the world, like it or not.

But it’s that stubborn insistence on keeping pace with the times — and trying to say something serious about them — that has propelled Bono, guitarist Edge, bassist Adam Clayton, and drummer Larry Mullen Jr. into the position of maintaining a mass audience without entirely succumbing to becoming an oldies act. The band finally caved with the Joshua Tree anniversary tour, but until then, the foursome that has been together for 40 years without a lineup change had held nostalgia at bay.


So Songs of Experience (Interscope ** 1/2) has plenty of work to do in hopes of getting the band back on track and making U2 sound relevant in 2017.

The album — which, along with its predecessor, takes its title, with characteristic chutzpah if not insufferable pretension, from a 1789 William Blake poetry collection — has been much delayed.


It was initially scheduled to follow swiftly after Songs of Innocence but was pushed back after that album’s not-terrible music was overshadowed by its botched release. Then Bono suffered a debilitating bike accident in Central Park in 2015, which he sings about on the new album’s “Lights of Home” (“I thought my head was harder than ground”). That song also seems to allude to another as yet not-spoken-about health crisis for the 57-year-old songwriter, who coyly shares: “I shouldn’t be here, ’cause I should be dead.”


Camera icon ANTON CORBIJN
The album cover for U2’s Songs of Experience
And then there’s the matter of Donald Trump. With Songs of Experience all but finished, the music was overtaken by world events. First, Britain retreated from the international stage with the Brexit vote, and then Trump was elected on a build-a-wall platform that’s anathema to Bono’s vision of the United States as a beacon offering hope to the hopeless around the world.

That perspective is put forth on Songs of Experience’s “American Soul,” which features a guest appearance by rapper Kendrick Lamar that’s neither fully integrated nor well thought out. (In fact, the Irish band didn’t seem to know what to do with the Compton emcee’s verse, which is inserted between “American Soul” and the previous track, “Get Out of Your Own Way.”)


“American Soul” itself feels like a pasted-together song, in which the Edge rocks out and the band bangs away at familiar themes with the ham-handed chorus: “You and I are rock and roll, you are rock and roll / We came here looking for American soul.”

But to be fair, the verses also neatly summarize the message of inclusiveness the band aims to get across: “It’s not a place,” Bono sings, “This country is to me a thought that offers grace.”



The premise of Songs of Experience is that the promise of acceptance has been betrayed, and the beacon of light dimmed, if not fully extinguished. As Bono puts it on “Blackout,” one of the album’s strongest tracks, whose wildcat energy evokes the 2004 hit “Vertigo,” it seems that “Democracy is flat on its back, Jack.”

In that grim environment, what is the role of music, of art, and, most important in this case, of U2? The answer, the album that was chiefly produced by Jacknife Lee and Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic (with assistance from many others) suggests, is to provide optimism and inspiration, and to repeatedly revisit the motif of shining a guiding light just when the night is at its darkest.

That concept is first floated on the quiet, maybe too-obvious opener “Love is All We Have Left,” in which Bono’s vocals are mildly AutoTuned. The lyric argues for a carpe diem engagement with rather than a retreat from the world: “This is no time not to be alive.”


Things get uneven from there, however, and recurring imagery suggests the band is short of ideas. “Light of Home” finds the road warrior rock star being pulled back to the comfort of his domicile, and he takes a similar trip in a love song to his wife, Ali, called “Landlady.”

Songs of Experience is autobiographical in content for Bono, and by design it contrasts with Songs of Innocence, which looked back on adolescence and U2’s formative years. The new album falls far short of the band’s best work, but it is more aggressive and energized than its predecessor.

And it has some fun along the way, as Bono cops to the narcissism of the lifelong entertainer in the strutting “The Showman” (who “prays his heartache will chart” and “makes a spectacle of falling apart”) and mocks his big mouth in the agreeably catchy “You’re the Best Thing about Me.”



Songs of Experience rounds to a close by repeating itself. “Love is Bigger Than Anything in Its Way” strikes a tender chord as it addresses a younger generation, warning against cynicism. (And, yes, those are Bono’s son Eli and Edge’s daughter Sian on the album cover.)

But U2 has played the unity-will-conquer-all card too many times already for it to resonate fully. With an encore closing anthem as stadium-worthy as “One,” what’s the point of going down that road again and again? And “Love” is followed by yet another track about finding the way out of the darkness, “13 (There is Light.)”


There’s nothing the matter with the song on its own: A wash of keyboards slowly builds in intensity, and Bono’s vocal gains power as he resists oversinging while bucking himself up to not stop believing. It just would be more effective if we didn’t have the sense that we’re experienced it all before.

 

[purpleoscar]

Brutal

 

[cseggleton]

And don't let the bastards grind you down!!!