Classic or Dud: U2

more like poo poo

It should be noted that they are practically at the Bridges To Babylon point in their career.

― You and Dad's Army? (C. Grisso/McCain), Thursday, September 11, 2014 3:15 PM (4 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

In purely chronological terms, they're pretty much exactly at that point.

Bono's as old as Mick was when Bridges to Babylon came out.

he's aging better.

Would love to see U2 enter a neon "Let's Work" period.

Fricke's review is the beginning of U2's Doodoo Lounge period:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/doodoo-lounge/Content?oid=885084

as this state of affairs continues, reviewers will be forced to make finer and finer distinctions to keep describing records as better than the last one but not as good as Some Girls. Mathematically, this recurring loop can be demonstrated thusly, where Some Girls is given a value of 1, its successor, Emotional Rescue, is arbitrarily assigned half that value, and each succeeding album is assigned half the value of its predecessor plus the total of all the fractions before it:

1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 .

While this progression is theoretically infinite, it may eventually strain the bounds of human journalism. It's possible reviewers will eventually agree that some future Stones album is better than Some Girls, and then compare it to the previous watershed, probably Exile on Main St. (As the quotations below demonstrate, this process may have already begun.) Exile will hold for a while, and then even earlier benchmarks (Beggar's Banquet, Aftermath) will be cited and then breeched. Finally, inevitably, England's Newest Hit Makers, the Stones' U.S. debut, will rise and ultimately fall in the face of their extraordinary continuing artistic growth. All of which can only mean one thing: the band's best work is ahead of them.

I feel like Eno should devise a series of Oblique Strategies exclusively for U2:

235. "Losing Your Edge"
14. Record in a room filled with money. Then record the sound of just the money. Then delete that recording and burn the money. Then record that.
72. Replace Larry with a machine. Then replace Adam and the Edge with a machine, too. Then replace Bono with a machine, but bring back the real Larry, Edge and Adam.
875. Cut your hair like Macklemore.
65. Wrap it in foil, stick it in the microwave, see what happens.
8777. Record an album in a week.

I feel like we can replace Eno with an Oblique Strategy.

Not really bothered about reading his U2 review or even listening to the album, but I'm just wondering... does David Fricke still have that haircut that makes his head look like the shape of the helmet of a penis?

Would be funny if one of the rhythm section decided to do a Bill Berry at this point. Maybe funnier if they actually carried on

Xpost at least as of a Robyn Hitchcock concert in manhattan a few years back, yes he does still have that haircut

Fricke looks like a cross between Johnny Ramone and Skeletor.

http://www.programmingthenation.com/production_stills/David_Fricke.jpg
"Five stars. You're welcome."

(To be fair, he always seems like a nice guy, and he's one of the few older critics who still goes out to shows all the time.)

Greates Marky Ramone tribute act ever

I dunno. Could also read that as the Greatest Tom Scholz tribute act ever.

Would be funny if one of the rhythm section decided to do a Bill Berry at this point. Maybe funnier if they actually carried on

― Master of Treacle, Tuesday, September 16, 2014 12:25 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think U2 could quite comfortably carry on if Adam Clayton left. Maybe less so if Larry Mullen left.

I think at this point they could carry on if they all left.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, HoloBono and the U2s!"

We are all U2, that is why they are called U2.

this is not "No Line on the Horizon" by U2

Indeed!

Anyway, I won't have to deal with this until I get a new laptop
― Dominique, Thursday, September 11, 2014 5:46 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^i really love this, the new U2 album as something you're gonna have to man up and face someday, like death and taxes

I thought I'd lost my mind during the 'ba ba barbara, santa barbara' part

does this album sound weird, or do iTunes files just sound bad?

so when I download the latest version of itunes this is gonna be in my library?

if you download it before Oct 13, yeah. I think so.

dud

ughhh it's on my ipod touch

Nelson Muntz should have been on the cover of this album, basically

You can miss it if you have automatic downloads turned off in iTunes, I think.

yeah I don't have that turned on (why would I want anything automatically from iTunes)

oh wait, there is a little cloud icon with an arrow, so i think it's in my library but i have to download it to get it? anyways this is so fucking stupid

It's on my wife's iPhone, she's never plugged it in to iTunes or ever synced it. It just appeared on her phone.

the album is now part of your default consciousness, and you only need to remember that you've heard it

My new perspective on this is that U2 is the perfect musical equivalent of Apple, so if you own an Apple product and use iTunes, you deserve to have a new U2 forced on you and are not allowed to complain about it.

complaining was cool last week. this week, it's cool to listen to the whole album and enjoy it.

it sounds like it was recorded in a glass bottle, it's so airless/dead sounding

complaining was cool last week. this week, it's cool to listen to the whole album and enjoy it.

That, my friend, will never be cool.

They should have given out Zooropa for free to help the global audience to one last chance to rediscover this gem and thus correct one of the great misjudgements in the history of human art.

http://www.whoisu2.com

They should have given out Zooropa for free to help the global audience to one last chance to rediscover this gem and thus correct one of the great misjudgements in the history of human art.

OTFM. It's amazing how many people I know (c. pre-nu-U2) like "everything but 'Zooropa," or got off the boat with "Zooropa." "Zooropa" is amazing. Even "Pop" is mostly good. I think what really bristles about this latest marketing gambit is that U2 is finally so rich and so powerful - which really didn't happen til the post nu-U2 era - that they can do whatever they want, and what they choose is ... whatever it takes to get more.

As a friend noted:

in the book 'U2 by U2', Bono says of The Unforgettable Fire, the band’s fourth album, “all we had to do was to keep doing what we were doing and we would have become the biggest band since Led Zeppelin.” And though Bono said they were “reapplying for the job of the best band in the world” in 2000 they have often substituted “biggest” for “best.”

https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xaf1/v/t1.0-9/s720x720/10599301_10152707347799214_8572691908702938605_n.jpg?oh=ec8debc3b5711692bdd81e180ebb64e4&oe=548BA421&__gda__=1422905812_cb5edaff3d10e2e4cb47b9be0793102a

Didn't realise Morten Harket was into U2 then. Subtle A-ha influence?

from the Torygraph

The Irish band’s 19-album back catalogue sold 6,744 copies in the last week ...based on data from then Official Charts Company. That compares with 697 sales the previous week. Almost all of the extra sales were digital downloads, with fewer than 60 U2 albums sold on the high street.

well there is the beautiful day / sun always shines on tv thing so... xp

nobody that likes their own music would behave in such a way

I know that the internet is filled within whining whiners who like to whine but all the complaining about a free album irritated me to no end. (I guess I am whining about this... Whatever.)

I got the album on my computer, listened once and (apparently unlike everyone else) had zero problem making it go away once I realized it was boring and I'd never listen to it again.

Yeah it's kind of incredible. I don't like it but I dunno I'll probably keep it just for shits & giggles

Not feeling the album so much, it's probs my least fave of theirs from what I can tell (disappointing bc NLOTH was really good and has some epic U2 jams) but it's an amazing troll effort.