Where The Streets Have No Name / The U2 Thread

[burl jam]

Maybe slightly illuminating: My buddy engineered a vocal session with Bono once, sometime in the late aughts. He said that Bono was insistent on using an SM58 — a mic that retails for less than $100 — because it was more
Important to him that he could hold the mic and move around the studio floor; it helped him get what he felt was a more passionate performance.

BoNO sit still.

[tragabigzanda]

[liebzz]

No Line on the Horizon

Here’s my official hot take of this U2 journey: No Line On the Horizon is the best U2 album of the 21st century. Granted, I still don’t think it stacks up with their best work per se, but it is the most cohesive and consistent album since maybe Zooropa and possibly Achtung Baby. The songs are almost all good, but what I enjoy about this album, even if it is not breaking new sonic ground, is that the songs take their time to reveal themselves to you, and the enjoyment is not immediate, but once it hits you, you get it. Moment of Surrender is a perfect example of this, as is Magnificent and No Line on the Horizon. Other songs grab you a bit earlier but still feel well textured to give you that feeling that you are along for a longer ride, like Breathe. Get On Your Boots, Stand Up Comedy and FEZ / Being Born pile up on each other nicely. Even the mild Cedars of Lebanon feels like it’s giving you something to walk away with. I really liked the straight ahead rock feel of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, but I think this one has the edge on the way it builds its atmospheres and textures without coming off as overly arty.

[VinylGuy]

I agree with you. Its U2 being loose and experimenting in the studio. The title track is pure joy and the album has groove. I think Lanois has a lot to do with it.

[surfndestroy]

Moment of Surrender's vocals are quite astonishing for a guy 30+ years into his career.

His voice was still holding up on the Songs of Innocence tour but I noticed a big drop on the Joshua Tree anniversary tour and even more pronounced drop on the Songs of Experience tour. Bono not having his voice will make U2 purely a nostalgia act for me.

[liebzz]

Songs of Innocence

In many ways, this album feels like a distilled version of No Line on the Horizon. U2 continues to at least give the impression that they are tinkering around in the studio and create something thought provoking. No Line on the Horizon accomplished that in spades, but here the songs are mostly nondescript. It’s been a while since the Clayton/Mullens duo has held any sway, but this is an album in particular where their contributions are needed because this feels like U2 drowning simply by trying to hard to tread water. Sleep Like a Baby Tonight, Cedarwood Road, The Miracle, Every Breaking Wave, Song for Someone are decent songs, but given the standard that exists for U2, highlights being decent won’t cut it. There may not be anything embarrassingly bad here, but there’s also no real reason to return to this album either.

[surfndestroy]

I am a big fan of No Line but this album and the next don't do much for me. They're not bad but not up to par for U2. That said, Every Breaking Wave on this tour was transcendent.

Latter day Bono is way too wordy for me. The songs just become vehicles for his voice more than vehicles for the band.

[liebzz]

I am a big fan of No Line but this album and the next don't do much for me. They're not bad but not up to par for U2. That said, Every Breaking Wave on this tour was transcendent.

Latter day Bono is way too wordy for me. The songs just become vehicles for his voice more than vehicles for the band.

I agree. I think that assuming there is a next album after Experience that it needs to be a band breakout. I don’t know what form that takes but they should be throwing the Clayton/Mullens team into the mix more and see what comes out. I haven’t listened to Experience yet and will get to it soon enough, but it’s been the Bono/Edge show for 20 years now and it’s time for everyone to get back in the game together.

[Kevin Davis]

I really like No Line and probably 2/3 of Songs of Innocence. I think Songs of Experience is the maybe the weakest album of their career.

[burl jam]

I just want to say that I've enjoyed this brief album discussion that you've brought about liebzz. While it'll come to its end soon it's being nice to pop in here and talk about the music. When it comes to U2, the albums seem to be rarely talked about, and bypassed in favour of Bono, politics, and tour stuff.

[liebzz]

I just want to say that I've enjoyed this brief album discussion that you've brought about liebzz. While it'll come to its end soon it's being nice to pop in here and talk about the music. When it comes to U2, the albums seem to be rarely talked about, and bypassed in favour of Bono, politics, and tour stuff.

Thanks! Like I said at the outset (I think) this is yet another band I knew the hits but not the albums. I ended up jumping on this both as an antidote to a months long retreat with the Grateful Dead, and because I was spurred by someone else’s journey. It ended up working out well and inspiring a new focus on their music for more than just me, which of course is the ultimate goal.

[EJ]

Inspired by liebzz's album journey, I listened to Zooropa today. Really great album. Songs that don't typically stand out to me - Daddy's & Dirty Day, really sounded great as part of the album listening experience.

[liebzz]

I liked Zooropa more than I expected to. And it does hold up better as a whole rather than the sum of its parts.

[VinylGuy]

Moment of Surrender's vocals are quite astonishing for a guy 30+ years into his career.

His voice was still holding up on the Songs of Innocence tour but I noticed a big drop on the Joshua Tree anniversary tour and even more pronounced drop on the Songs of Experience tour. Bono not having his voice will make U2 purely a nostalgia act for me.

Amazing vocal moment.

[VinylGuy]

Songs of Innocence is a tricky one for sure. It took them a lot of time and it kinda shows they are nervous about how to maintain their popularity, specially with No Line being kind of a failure by U2 standar. The Apple bullshit really hit em harder too....but mainly the songs are fine. Sleep Like A Baby Tonight, Every Breaking Wave and The Troubles are my favorite.

[LetMeSleep]

There are 7 really strong songs on Innocence. I was rather surprised by that album.

And I always listen to it without tracks 4 + 5 (I've long ago deleted those) and adding Lucifer's Hands and The Crystal Ballroom.

[liebzz]

Songs of Experience

This album has a lot in common with Songs of Innocence, and I figured that would be the case. This is still U2 seemingly synthesizing their sound from All That You Can’t Leave Behind through the present, but rather than an album, like The Joshua Tree, that managed to grab everything great about their early years in one document, this album felt more like a chore. There is still plenty to like, especially in the “deluxe” version with actually standout tracks like Ordinary Love - Extraordinary Mix, the St. Peter’s string version of Light s of Home, and the You’re the Best Thing About Me mix with Kygo. They all add something to me from their album versions. For the album itself, I found there were either strong songs that sort of fell apart in the melodramatic bridges, like Love is Bigger Than Anything in Its Way, or interspersed good moments in songs I didn’t really like, as in Red Flag Day. The standout track on this one is The Blackout, which feels like the one moment they put it all together for the full song.

Larger thoughts on the journey to come...

[liebzz]

So at the end of this journey, which didn’t quite end on the bang you always wish for, I can say I have a much different perspective on U2 than I had going in. I knew their 80s greatest hit and lived through the 90s on hits and figured their early stuff mostly sounded the same and the 90s an effort to over react to being that one trick pony - then I thought the 00s and beyond were just them pumping out melodramatic hits. That may or may not have been that far off, but what I see now is a band that sort of teetered on the edge of falling apart musically early but held themselves together with a phenomenal rhythmic chemistry between Clayton and Mullens. As the band grew up, they grew closer together musically, and basically hit pay dirt on their developing sound on The Unforgettable Fire and The Joshua Tree. Their second peak came with Achtung Baby, which in the end I think is their best album. They really were moving and perfecting this more electronic sound as they went along through the 90s, but mostly dumped the approach to create All That You Can’t Leave Behind - an album that seemed to unify U2 fans as universally great but an album to me that announces the sort of beginning of the end. They still had two more fantastic records in How to Dismantle an atomic Bomb and No Line on the Horizon - both very good for different reasons, but going forward there still seems to be this need to recapture All That You Can’t Leave Behind. I think it is one of their weakest albums and it disappoints me that I think U2 is insisting on being the Bono and Edge show, at least on their albums, but they have done some great things along their way, and even the albums I am least keen on are still good albums. There’s never a place in their catalogue where they should feel embarrassed- but there’s still room to grow and find something new. 40 years in and it still doesn’t seem like they are on the decline, just that I would personally like to see them revisit the creative and innovative drum and bass lines they were exploring in the first half of their career with the experimentation they played with in the 90s. Or maybe come up with something totally different! That worked for them in the past. I just hope we’re not in for more Songs...

[burl jam]

Landlady is probably the best song from the Songs albums.

[Kevin Davis]

I listened to No Line and Songs of Innocence this morning -- I think both of these are very good albums, with No Line clearly the better of the two but both ultimately signaling late career peaks for me. There really aren't any songs I don't like on No Line, though I have clear favorites: "Moment of Surrender" for sure, and I am never not captivated by how lovely the understated "White As Snow" and "Cedars of Lebanon" are. I really like "Breathe" a lot too, though I was struck anew by the lyric "16th of June, Chinese stocks are going up/And I'm coming down with some new Asian virus," which will probably now forever make me think of Donald Trump referring to COVID as "the Chinese flu" or whatever he said about it. Innocence is not quite on the same level, and suffers from opening with one of the weakest songs on the album ("The Miracle of Joey Ramone"), but is still a really strong collection of tunes with only 2 or 3 that really just don't hit the spot for me. Both of these albums feel musically curious to me in a way that All That You Can't Leave Behind and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb do not -- I found both of those albums enjoyable, but these two I find exciting. I'll do Experience later, but from memory I don't really care for it at all, apart from a song or two.