Taking Sides: ACHTUNG BABY by U2 VS. MONSTER by R.E.M

M'Lord, better save that for the eff-orribleness that is Reveal.

Oh well. I still love about a third of the songs off A-Baby - and about a half of Monster.
But Baby has over the years lost some of its luster for me, whereas Monster at the same time has come to appear *a bit* more solid record that it initially did.

It still kind of seems that most of what you've said of U2 could be applied to Radiohead. Surely the number of people who were already listening to Boards of Canada or Autechre or even DJ Shadow was much smaller, whatever the press coverage of that stuff. (Ditto for Paul Lansky, though he was the darling of the electronic art music world too!) Even Portishead and Bjork and Massive Attack weren't doing what Kid A did. I guess maybe NIN did throw an ambient instrumental on to Downward Spiral but still. Certainly the people who were listening to The Bends along with Oasis (and frankly, Soul Asylum and The Tragically Hip . . . and U2) weren't listening to all that stuff. And most people I know offline did go off Radiohead when they went electronic.

I'd say OK 'puter sounds the most U2-like (and the most uninteresting to me)of the R'head alb's I've heard.

Also, my experience in middle school may have been atypical but what it was was that I listened to classic and hard rock (and a bit of blues and jazz and Karnatak music) while 99% of the school listened to Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer and C&C Music Factory (and LL Cool J and Dee-Lite), with maybe some GnR, but for the most part people thought you were a freak if you wanted to play guitar or listen to stuff that didn't use drum machines. It seemed like that stuff was everywhere and 'modern' rock bands like U2 and EMF and Jesus Jones were just adapting to and drawing on it.

(xpost Was James a Britpop band?)

As if this mattered anymore. Eno's a whore.

What aboot the Top 10 debut for Broken? It's pretty rare for an EP to chart that high, especially one for with the seemingly limited audience yr giving the band.

I was 15 in 1991, and I recall all the hype of Achtung Baby prior to its release focused on the fact that they were making a dancable rock album along the lines of Jesus Jones (the name did appear repeatedly in all the stories), which seemed like a huge folly by the fall of '91 when Metallica, Guns 'n' Roses and Nirvana were the big bands, in contrast the the winter/spring popularity of JJ/EMF.

Gotta differ with you there. If there were any bands' sounds U2 were "gearing" towards on Achtung Baby, I wouldn't have cited James among them (more like Front 242 and, fuck, Berlin-era Bowie). Whether they succeeded or not is another matter.

Dare I suggest it here, but I think a lot of U2's departure had more to do with sartorial presentation. I mean, "One" and/or "Trying to Throw Your Arms Around My Pancreas" could've easily been on an earlier U2 record. The oft-cited "new direction" pretty much begins and ends with "Zoo Staion" and "the Fly".

I want a show of hands from people who go to sleep to this record.
(*Lowers Hand*)
No. And as for "Monster", it *IS* a snoozathon, but I doubt I could use it as an Audio Sedative. The Guitar work is awkward and jarring in spots.

I want a show of hands from people who go to sleep to this record.
(*Lowers Hand*)
No. And as for "Monster", it *IS* a snoozathon, but I doubt I could use it as an Audio Sedative. The Guitar work is awkward and jarring in spots.

M'Lord, better save that for the eff-orribleness that is Reveal.
After hearing "Monster" I didn't want to buy "Reveal"

Thats where the Eno connection makes sense.

I don't hear the Depeche Mode comparisons at all, only that they both owe something to glam.

I mean the Mirrorball Man, honestly.

Leftism came out in 95 - ie. about halfway between Zooropa and Pop. I don't think you can really hear its influence on the latter, but then by the time Pop came out there were other, more appropriate dance music reference points the band probably wanted to make.

The Depeche Mode similarity comes through stronger on their Songs of Faith & Devotion than on Violator, though I can imagine that "Personal Jesus" might have played some part.

Flood is a major reason that record sounds the way it does, after all he worked with Depeche Mode (Violator & Songs of Faith and Devotion) to NIN (Downward Spiral) to New Order (Movement) to Nick Cave (Your Funeral, My Trial). That guy is an expert at making things sound dirty and expensive at the same time.

"So Larry was bullshitting when he bigged up Leftfield?"

Probably not, but the band liking Leftfield probably had little bearing on their sound.

As for Achtung baby, I remember it being touted at the time as their baggy album, but it's only really Mysterious ways which would fit into that genre. If anybody influenced that record, the shadow of Bowie, Iggy and MBV is writ large on that album.

Er....I mentioned it about nine posts before you.

It has nothing to do with 'dance beats' per se. They weren't trying to be a 'dance' band. NIN and U2 have nothing whatever to do with one another.

Monster was a completely different deal: R.E.M. had helped to create an alternative radio sound, and then become wussified by comparison to their own genealogical descendents (like, say, Live - ugh). And Monster was a big rock-n-roll dildo they could wave around to say, "We did this first, we own this sound, even though in the last album there's a picture of Michael dressed like a consumptive monk." The whole thing is either undermined or greatly improved by the presence of really soulful, queenie songs ("Crush," "Strange Currencies," and "Tongue," which is beautiful, and "Let Me In," which if you've heard it live is an incredible song).

So I say that they are not to be compared, though I like Monster better because I think it's strong all the way through, whereas AB is a string of singles with a clunky ending. If I were *really* to compare 'reinvention' albums I would compare Green with Achtung, Baby, in which case U2 wins hands down, or I'd compare All That You Can't Leave Behind with Around the Sun--the mediocre, geriatric, let's-recapture-our-old-sound records.

in my defense it was a three word blurb in a long ass page

very easy to miss

Mark: Are you implying that Zooropa wasn't as good as Achtung Baby? Because IIRC I liked it much better. The title track, "Numb", and maybe even "Lemon" count among the handful of U2 songs that have made any connection at all for me, at least as far as my memory from 10 yrs ago goes.

The only reason people are like U2=dance is because of the hype around "Pop," which also wasn't a dance record except in the most token fashion ("Mofo" and remixes). Maybe the basic story: U2 pre-1991=fascinated with America and American sounds. U2 post-1991=fascinated with Europe and European sounds?