Get On Your Boots : Reviews Only

Originally posted by BonorMan:Oh, sorry, Lastly- I am happy that not everyone likes this song! That would mean it's too easy. And, I can't stand when everyone agrees because that's usually a sign of dumbed down, fast-food music. No, i like it bitter and strong. This song takes a direction. Love or hate it. Out of the 60% who supposedly hate it...probably 40% will change their minds.

I don't think this is a classic...who knows? But it gets attention for sure. And it leaves you wanting more. It's a great starter and I think it will do for this album what 'The Fly' did for Achtung Baby.

Originally posted by TheLast fall U2 producer Daniel Lanois took time off from working on the Irish superband’s 12th studio album, “No Line on the Horizon” (due March 3), for a solo tour of his own. But talking to the Herald, he had this to say about U2’s first recording in five years: “The president of the company is singing better than ever and the tracks are wildly innovative ... I believe rock ’n’ roll has been reinvented one more time.”

Grandiose words. But pretty accurate, at least judging by “Horizon’s” flagship single, “Get on Your Boots,” which Monday became available for the world to hear for free on U2’s Web site.

Unlike the band’s play-it-safe singles “Beautiful Day” and “Vertigo,” “Boots” is U2 at its most eccentric. Bono’s vocals swing wildly between the detachment of his old alter egos the Fly and Mephisto and the big, passionate bombast of “Rattle & Hum.” The Edge’s guitar is full-frontal once again with riffs as jagged and distorted as “Zoo Station” and snatches of layered, echo-y leads recalling “The Unforgettable Fire’s” “Wire.” The rhythm section follows Edge’s lead by blending “Wire” thump with the fuzz and jerk of “Zoo Station’s” rock electronica.

Lyrically Bono leaps from post-9/11 to post-Bush. He’s ready to leave behind war, terrorism and our fear-obsessed world as he sings about liberating himself from “the dark dream.” “I don’t wanna talk about wars between nations,” he tells us.

Nope, it sounds like the boots we’re being chided to don aren’t army issue but electric, neon go-go style. We may be living in troubled times, but there’s still hope, and still time to get freaky.

All of it adds up to a bright, superb mess, a manic left turn in the grand tradition of past manic left-turn U2 singles “The Fly” and “Numb.” Loads of fans are bound to hate it now only to consider it a classic in 10 years.

Originally posted by dancetehcnomusic.suite101.comU2 has enjoyed a long and fructuous career, highlighted by the brilliance of The Joshua Tree and Auchtung Baby and its spin-off Zooropa.

Along the way, U2 earned the title of the biggest band in the world. Then there was the disastrous Pop, followed by the much acclaimed All That You Can Leave Behind, and the misconstrued How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb. Through it all, the Irish rockers have embraced mood rock, new rave and seminal dance.

Their latest offering, "Get On Your Boots", originally penciled in for a February 15 drop, has had radio stations buzzing since it first aired on January 19, 2009 with a worldwide simultaneous release. The new song, however, straddles the fence somewhere between Auchtung Baby and Pop.

Get On Your Boots and Escape
Music magazines have dubbed the new U2 song a return to form and a gripping rocker in the same vein as "Vertigo". While the song does begin with a power riff courtesy of the Edge, flawless vocal from Bono, slabs of synths and some talk about the new world order, something about these three and a half minutes has a strange feel of familiar and uncomfortable.

The biggest oddity comes from Bono’s singing approach. It sounds like he's imitating the talk/sing style of "Wild, Wild West", a novelty hit for The Escape Club in 1988. Listening to Bono rhyme off the lyrics "You free me from the dark dream / Candy floss ice cream / All our kids are screaming / But the ghosts aren't real," sounds rather like the method The Escape Club chanted "Mandy's in the backroom handing out valium/ sheriff's on the airwaves talking to the D.J.'s / Forty seven heartbeats beating like a drum / got to live it up live it up/ Ronnie's got a new gun" from their late eighties number one.

After the talk of dark dreams and even a reference to Satan, Bono belts "Sexy boots" before remerging as international man of philanthropy with the lines, "I got a submarine /You got gasoline/ I don't want to talk about wars between nations".

Given the frequent changes in tempo and the bizarre lyrics it’s unclear what the song means. Is “Get On Your Boots” about laying down the guns and then laying down? Women's liberation? The Gaza Strip or the Vegas Strip? And does it all really matter?

As buzz of a new record began to surface, U2 stressed that when production had ceased on No Line on the Horizon, he felt disappointed and so delayed the album until the new batch of songs counted amongst their most diverse and sonically experimental. "Get On Your Boots," flirts with electronica and buzz guitar, but in the end, the track still sounds like U2 - for better or worse.

"Get On Your Boots" doesn't really live up to the hype. It's a great U2 record, and that's better than half the songs now spinning at radio, but it still pales in comparison to other U2 experiments such as "Mysterious Ways" or even "Zooropa". But if it is any indication of the weirdness of the parent record, there should be lots of surprises on …the horizon.

"Get On Your Boots" was written by U2 and produced byBrian Eno, Daniel Lanois. The song gets its official release on16 February 2009 but is available now on the US and Canadian iTunes stores as part of a pre-sale download.

Originally posted by KuklascornerFrom time to time, I’ll post fanboy reviews of different new releases in entertainment. In most cases, it’ll either be music (mostly notable indie rock releases) or geeky genre movies (it’s too bad my server crash deleted my review of The X-Files: I Want To Believe over the summer). If none of this interests you, feel free to politely ignore these posts.

Is it better to be innovative or comfortable? I have a feeling that people who listen to U2’s new single Get On Your Boots (check it out here) will fall into one of three categories:

-They prefer “mainstream” U2 and will hate it because it’s not a straightforward pop song.
-They’re music snobs that will hate it for the sake of hating it.
-They like experimental U2 and will give it a chance.

The latter two categories crave innovation but only one of them will accept this new song. As for the first category? If you’re looking for the comfortable, straightforward sounds of Beautiful Day, you still haven’t found what you’re looking for.

I fall into the last category. For a long, long time, I considered U2 one of my favorites, an artistic stalwart that could be counted on for trying something new and different though still maintaining their identity. Sure, some of it succeeded and some of it failed, but at least they weren’t complacent.

Then the 2000s hit, Bono got preachy, and the band homogenized itself, peaking with the utterly banal and predictable How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb. Which is why I was dreading the upcoming No Line On The Horizon; however, as early reports leaked that Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois were once again steering the U2 ship into uncharted waters, my interest perked up a little bit. When comparisons to The Fly were made just a few weeks ago—a song that beautifully incorporates a dense, layered mix, strong lyrics, and absolutely nothing that sounded like pop music-- I actually started to get excited.

What have we got here with Get On Your Boots? The simple way to explain it is that for anyone willing to give the song a chance, reserve your judgment until you hear it ten times.

My first reaction was that it was nothing like The Fly. Or, for that matter, anything else U2 had done before. Instead, I found myself instantly thinking of British bands Kasabian and Muse. Fuzz bass and a wicked guitar riff carry forward through a driving beat as Bono yells still-banal-but-not-awful lyrics about war and love and meaning before the song takes a series of strong, direct turns, first into a very Eno-esque wash of synths and harmonized vocals. Later, the abrupt shift is a drum breakdown out of nowhere that sounds like it was stolen from Trent Reznor’s library of overproduced percussion. And then it ends. Short, to the point, and almost modular, like different songs were cut and pasted together from the production library.

At first listen, you’ll probably be confused. On subsequent listens, you’ll probably be intrigued. And at some point, if you’re like me, something goes off in your head and you feel like you get it.

The lyrics? At his peak, I considered Bono to be one of music’s top word smiths. He knew how to blend metaphor and imagery so that emotions were carried, not explained. At least, he did this up until 2000. Once he started singing about causes, his words became straightforward preaches formed out of a rhyming dictionary. (Sorry, Bono, but for all your philanthropic efforts, you’ll never live down writing songs called Peace On Earth or Miracle Drug.) If he wrote Bad (1984’s brilliant musings on heroine addiction) today, it would simply be “Take the needle out of your arm/Otherwise you’ll die in a barn.”

As for the Boots’ music, it’s rock, but it’s not boring rock. Is it good? It’s innovative and different, though slightly borrowed from bands that have hit the scene since Atomic Bomb released. I wouldn’t say it’s an instant classic by any means, but it gives me hope that the band decided that they didn’t want to venture into Rolling Stones-style comfort. Instead, they’re still absorbing the sounds of the world, both the popular and obscure, and trying to channel it into something that’s still distinctly them.

Another way to look at it: As much as I liked Morrissey’s I’m Throwing My Arms Around Paris, it still sounded like the same ol, same ol. It lacked the muscle or life of Moz’s comeback single Irish Blood, English Heart, and as such, it was a nice song that I’ll listen to a few times and probably never come back to. It was comfortable. Get On Your Boots is different than that.

It’s disjointed, in some cases disharmonious, and very unpredictable. In many cases, when those elements are brought together, you get something that is utterly unlistenable and awful. In other cases, you get Radiohead’s OK Computer. I highly doubt No Line On The Horizon will approach OK Computer levels of greatness but Get On Your Boots works in a very bizarre way that whets the appetite of this jaded U2 fan. For the first time in years, I can’t wait to hear what they’ve got up their sleeve.

Now Bono, about those lyrics…

U2's Rather Brilliant If Grammatically Questionable Single, Get On Your Boots

Oh! Suffered has the U2 fan! You know what really sucked this past decade (apart from the obvious)? The last two U2 albums. Can we all just admit that now? If I wanted to hear watered down versions of the Joshua Tree (which I do not), then I assume that is what Coldplay is for. In short, if you liked those two albums, you will likely hate Get On Your Boots. Which is great! There's still plenty of Keane tickets for you.



Anyway! Does it sound like Pump It Up? Yes it does in the rapid-fire verses, quite a bit. Elvis Costello loves U2! So no need to worry about that. What's more worrying is that if you wanted to, you could make out the Escape Club's Wild Wild West in there too. Eesh.

Am I painting a picture, or what?

What it really sounds like is U2 slipping through a casual loop in time and meeting back up with the band who recorded Achtung Baby. Zooropa and Pop. Hey, those guys were really good! So knows from where the demos for this came, but U2's penchant for taking 27 years to make a record leads me to believe that this could easily have been left over from the Pop sessions. Edge really kills it on this track with a deeply processed, catchy riff which sounds a little like Discotheque (U2's last great single), and layers of similarly processed drums and super-fuzz bass give the song some real balls, which U2 have so severely lacked lately.

The chorus takes a weird, atonal turn, ("You don't know how beautiful you are") which is where you can hear the Moroccan influence producer Daniel Lanois was talking about. There's flamenco-ish acoustic guitars underneath, and Edge takes minimalism to new scarcities with a bent, chiming, six-note solo.

So, what is Bono talking about? In the proud tradition of nonsensical Bono lyrics, that is not often clear. There's rockets at the fun fair, Satan loves a bomb scare, candyfloss ice cream and ghosts that aren't real. Someone's stuff is blowing up, Bono's into growing up, and Hey! Sexy boots! Get on your boots! Yeah!

See, makes total sense.

LIKE I CARE. THIS SONG IS GENIUS.

What will be made most of (other than his wonderful take on a Wilhelm Scream about two minutes in) is Bono's line "I don't want to talk about the wars between the nations." NEITHER DO WE, BONO! YOU ARE A ROCKSTAR, REMEMBER. GOOD JOB. "Not right now." Oh right. In a minute then. It really wouldn't be Bono without epic, politicised gestures. Neither would it be Bono without some unfettered praise of women (who "are the future with the big revelations"), and sweetly clumsy mixed metaphors ("I got a submarine, you got the gasoline.")

It all ends on a long, half-time drum breakdown, with Bono chanting that he wants us all to "meet him in the sound! Yeah, hey HEY!" Which you should do, it's really rather good in there. Really! U2's pendulum has swung back to wacky experimentalism. Rejoice! I'm only mildly disappointed they didn't call it Sexy Boots. Song titles were never their strong suit.

Verdict: WIN. Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Ding! Even if the album tracklist does read like a McSweeneys list, I have faith that U2 will once again ride on the Unsuck Express. Also, Bono has cut his hair really short, which always means business

Originally posted by johnnybono:Does anyone think of "wild wild west" by the 80's group the Escape Club? I hate to hear it in this song but it does remind me of it! Still a great song though!!!!!

Originally posted by johnnybono:Does anyone think of "wild wild west" by the 80's group the Escape Club? I hate to hear it in this song but it does remind me of it! Still a great song though!!!!!