Originally posted by pleasegone:[..]
Ok, so if your choice was 12 really good to great songs that don't seem to be cohesive, or a very cohesive album with 3 really good to great songs, and 9 songs that are barely ok, which would you take?
If you just take the studio songs, I think Hattle & Rum was very cohesive. I wish it just would've been a studio release, and that there would've been a seperate double live album, as The Joshua Tree never got a real live album, just a few songs on Hattle. I thought With Or Without You was epic there, and should've been on a proper live album, not just in the movie.
Ok, so if your choice was 12 really good to great songs that don't seem to be cohesive, or a very cohesive album with 3 really good to great songs, and 9 songs that are barely ok, which would you take?
I think I've already answered that, I love R&H, but I prefer JT, AB or Pop. I also think it is unfair to want me to pick "barely ok" songs, which U2 in my eyes have not put out in album filling numbers.
Songs I don't particularly like (such as Elvis Prestley & America) make sense on an experimental album full of Enoisms and Lanoiities, as does Cedars on NLOTH. Those albums are carried by great songs from the same tree of life: ASOH, MoS, FEb-BB and TUF, Breathe or Wire, Pride vs Magnificent. So barely ok is always a minor speck in a sea of greatness.
In fact they've done barely ok on most albums, Red Hill Mining Town, Velvet Dress, for example and their indicence has increased slightly, but I can still accept them, because as a whole, their last three albums make sense; they are cohesive, in style and content.
If you just take the studio songs, I think Hattle & Rum was very cohesive. I wish it just would've been a studio release.
We've mused about this before, a full studio R&H would be something like: http://www.u2start.com/topic/8995/12/12/
The thing is that there are a lot of covers in those sessions and a lot of collaborations, which leads to some fragmentation in style, even though there is a theme running through it all:exploration of-, reinventing of -, hommage to the classics.
A full JT live exists in the shape of the bonus DVD to JT20, LoveTown live is there in the shape of Dublin dec89. That's enough for me, it sounds like a good idea, but they've never actually done a live album, UABRS is barely 8 songs, from different locations, with studio mixing/edits/fixes...
