Originally posted by MWSAH:It seems the majority of press is quite positive about the album. Only The Guardian gives 3 out of 5, the rest basically says it's a good to very good album with U2 getting back to old shape. There is praise for the personal feel of the album and U2 just doing what they do best, with fresh layers in all the songs.
Originally posted by KieranU2:[..]
Something tells me that the Guardian writers have an issue with the rating system. Most albums seem to get 3 out of 5.
Originally posted by Humo.be > LINK
U2 heeft lang op hun meesterzet zitten broeden. Men wist dat er een nieuwe plaat zat aan te komen, maar officiële, concrete informatie (zoals: een releasedatum) bleef lang uit. Tot Apple-CEO Tim Cook gisterenavond omstreeks 21 uur de pers bijeenriep: ‘Songs of Innocence’, de dertiende U2 in een 35-tal jaar, werd uit het niets gelanceerd als toetje na de voorstelling van de iPhone 6, en gepresenteerd met een bolle strik eromheen.
Van nu tot 13 oktober, de dag van de fysieke release, kan elke Apple-gebruiker ‘m gratis in zijn iTunes-lijst beluisteren. U wist het nog niet, maar er staan elf nieuwe U2-songs in uw cloud.
Het werd u en ons daarbij verkocht als de grootste albumrelease aller tijden: de eerste plaat die voor een half miljard iTunes-gebruikers slechts een klik verwijderd is. Kwantitatief zal het kloppen, maar het heeft een hoog ‘Bij elke zak Doritos twee flippo’s gratis’-gehalte. Voor de directe betrokkenen is het nochtans win-win: het sinds de dood van Steve Jobs danig spartelende Apple is het een stunt van jewelste om hun nieuwe iHorloges met lawaai in de markt te zetten. En U2 had, nog voor de fans één noot gehoord hadden, alle productiekosten al lang terugverdiend, and then some. Goed voor hen, en het zou allemaal nauwelijks het vermelden waard zijn als de plaat ook een moordplaat was geweest.
‘Songs of Innocence’ is evenwel niet erg goed. Ze klinkt als het werkstuk van een groep die alles al eens gezien en gedaan heeft en nu graag nog eens de rush van de Eerste Keer wil beleven. U2 is de weg van de Red Hot Chili Peppers opgetrokken: elke nieuwe plaat blijkt een stap verder van wat het moet en zou kunnen zijn. Wat de groep op deze plaat vooral mist, is een voldragen ziel: de sensatie dat hun songs niet alleen vakmanschap etaleren en fingerspitzengefühl voor de juiste hook op het juiste moment, maar ook het product zijn van mensen van vlees en bloed die wat ze zingen en spelen ook vóélen. Er is een half leger producers aan te pas gekomen, met Danger Mouse als teamleider, maar zo veel groepswerk heeft geen midas touch opgeleverd.
Elf songs. Drie goeie, acht overbodige. Dat klinkt hard, maar het is niet anders. Neem ‘Every Breaking Wave’, dat in de aarzelende intro nog aan het beste op ‘Joshua Tree’ doet denken, maar een minuut later in een melodie van dertien in een dozijn verzandt. Grootse gebaren, armen in de lucht, maar daaronder niets dat die grootsheid kan verantwoorden. ‘Raised by Wolves’ lijkt, wanneer het refrein eenmaal is losgebarsten, nog het meest op iets van A-Ha. Duran Duran, eventueel. (‘Raised by Wolves’ is ook de titel van een boek over de geschiedenis van de Christian rock & roll, waarin de Ieren van U2 aan bod komen.) En ‘California (There’s No End to Love)’ heeft het soort gemakkelijk meezingbare Woaa-oa-oa-oaa’s dat in de eerste plaats een gebrek aan ideeën moet maskeren.
Hier en daar wordt geschreven dat U2 met ‘Songs of Innocence’ een nieuwe richting is ingeslagen; dat ze hun oude zin voor experiment hebben teruggevonden. Nee. Op ‘Pop’ werd destijds geëxperimenteerd: niet van kop tot kont met succes, maar er gebéúrde iets, en het leverde een handvol tijdloze songs op. Als ‘Songs of Innocence’ al een zoektocht is, dan naar de directe weg om de oude vorm terug te vinden. Het is de gevoelige U2 die men hier tracht te verbeelden, de (licht tot zwaar) naïeve U2 die vrolijk en uplifting tracht te klinken.
De enige tracks waarin dat lukt zijn ‘Cedarwood Road’ (een valse trage met een solide opbouw en een mooi achtergrondkoortje) en ‘The Troubles’ (dat nog eens écht zindert, en niet doet alsof). ‘Sleep Like a Baby Tonight’ klinkt nogal gesuikerd, maar er valt verder weinig op af te dingen: kan er ook mee door. Het is, droog aan de haak, niet veel, en al helemaal niet na zolang wachten: ‘No Line on the Horizon’, hun vorige, is eerder dit jaar vijf geworden.
U2 wint in alle categorieën die met superlatieven omschreven kunnen worden: ze zijn de grootste, de spectaculairste, bijna de oudste. Ze weten nog steeds hoe ze ons een eenmalige ‘Wow!’ moeten ontlokken, maar niet meer hoe die ‘Wow!’ langer dan vijf seconden aangehouden kan worden. I still haven’t found what I’m looking for: een U2-plaat die terug aanknoopt bij de bloedvorm op ‘The Joshua Tree’, ‘Achtung Baby’ en ‘Zooropa’. De cirkel is bovendien rond: The Killers en Coldplay werden ooit verweten hun platen met halfbakken U2-covers te vullen, nu klinken U2-songs ‘The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)’, ‘California’ en ‘Volcano’ als pogingen om het Killers- en Coldplay-geluid te vatten.
‘Songs of Innocence’ werd ons cadeau gedaan door Apple. Kwam iemand op onze verjaardagsfuif met zo’n cadeau aanzetten, hij zou het jaar erop niet meer uitgenodigd worden.
- LINK
U2 have released their new album with the help of the big Apple.
The album, Songs of Innocence, became available for free yesterday to anyone with an iTunes account.
In an age where no one buys your album unless your name is Adele or Calvin Harris, it makes good sense to just give it to 500 million people.
Even if 99 per cent hate it or don’t bother listening to it, that means five million people might dig it. It’s such a simple strategy it’s a wonder no one’s beaten U2 to the punch.
While releasing your new album alongside a new iPhone – the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus – and the new Apple Watch might not be very cool, whatever the heck that means these days, it definitely makes financial sense.
But does Songs of Innocence make musical sense? Read our track-by-track guide below to find out:
1. The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)
It’s a bit of a plodding start. Songs of Innocence is allegedly the sound of U2 trying to recapture their youth (hasn’t every U2 album since 1987 been that?), and they make an attempt here with a tribute to one of their heroes.
The Miracle is saved by a rousing chorus and a decent sing-along WOAH-WOAH-WOAH, the kind you can already hear stadiums chanting. So far, so so-so though.
2. Every Breaking Wave
This is more like it, managing to sound like classic U2 with a modern (The) Edge. The reason it sounds so fresh is because every second indie rock band of the past ten years has tried to copy them. A perfect weather-based companion piece to the excellent Electrical Storm from a few years back.
3. California (There is No End to Love)
Opening a song with some bells tolling is a risky strategy, as it puts you up against AC/DC’s Hells Bells and Metallica’s For Whom The Bell Tolls, but U2 wisely steer clear of going heavy and instead drift into an ode to Santa Barbara.
It’s the kind of song you can imagine driving to in a Mustang down the 101, but is it as good as the song with the same title by Phantom Planet (spot The OC fans)? No.
4. Song for Someone
U2 fare better these days when they keep things a bit more spartan, and in Song for Someone, less is more. It’s got a whiff of Staring At The Sun about it, which is no bad thing.
5. Iris (Hold Me Close)
Bono’s mother Irish died 40 years ago today, when he was 14, after suffering a brain aneurysm at her own father’s funeral.
This song isn’t the first to deal with the loss of his mother (Mofo, on the unfairly derided Pop album, is one of the best), but it’s a decent addition to that list. ‘I got your light inside of me,’ sings Bono, sounding as young as ever.
6. Volcano
‘Hello hello… I’m in a place called VOLCANO!’ Well, not quite. This is a bit of a different beast to Vertigo. But what a beast it is.
Adam Clayton (always the coolest member of U2, although to be fair it’s only ever been a contest between him and Larry Mullen Jr) pounds his bass into gear like it’s 1980 all over again.
7. Raised By Wolves
A long build-up finally gives way to… something pretty mediocre, actually. Skip it and move on to the next one.
8. Cedarwood Road
You can almost feel the sweat dripping off this one. For the biggest rock band in the world, U2 rarely rock out as hard as they should, but they give it a good stab here, recalling their days in Dublin when they were merely the biggest band on their estate.
Expect lots of Dubs to be singing this at the end of drunken nights on both sides of O’Connell Bridge by the end of the year.
9. Sleep Like a Baby Tonight
U2 went a bit dance with Pop back in 1997, got slated for it and returned to basics in time for 2000’s monster hit-laden All That You Can’t Leave Behind, and have kind of stayed in that mode ever since, trying to recapture an ever distant youth.
It’s an admirable quest, but sometimes you just want them to do their best to rip off Wake Up Dead Man, one of their great forgotten songs. Which they attempt here. Brilliantly.
10. This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now
U2 channel The Specials. And it works. Almost. But it’s definitely worth the effort.
11. The Troubles
One of the many great things about 1993 U2 album Zooropa is Johnny Cash closing it with the wonderful The Wanderer. On Songs of Innocence, they let Swedish singer Lykke Li help finish things off, and it’s a masterstroke. Bono really is one of the best backing singers around.
Overall verdict: Another Achtung Baby is probably beyond them at this stage of their careers, and Songs of Innocence isn’t anywhere near that league, but U2’s 13th album is far from unlucky.
In its quieter moments, when they’re not desperately trying to recapture that youthful over-ambitious zest that became their trademark, U2 show they are still a musical force to be reckoned with.
4 stars out of 5
Standout tracks: Every Breaking Wave, Song for Someone, Cedarwood Road, Sleep Like a Baby Tonight, The Troubles
Originally posted by Wall - LINK
“Songs of Innocence,” the new album by U2 that was released for free this afternoon on iTunes, is catnip for the band’s fans and a worthy, if conservative, addition to its catalogue. At its best it’s top-shelf U2 – taut, direct and, as always, supremely confident. On some of the mid-tempo numbers, though, the rough edges have been sanded too well, placing Bono at a distance from the band.
Lyrically, Bono and the Edge are looking back on “Songs of Innocence”; as Bono’s liner notes reveal, U2’s history and his childhood memories informed the album’s themes. The notes assert that music was the band’s passport to a new life; in turn, the band pays tribute to early influences including punk in the form of Joey Ramone, who is name-checked in the title of the opening song: “I woke up at the moment when the miracle occurred…The most beautiful sound I’d ever heard.” “This Is Where Your Can Reach Me Now” is dedicated to the Clash’s Joe Strummer, a god to the band: “(He) was some soldier,” Bono writes in the notes, “his guitar a weapon, his mouth almighty…We signed up.” Less effectively, “California (There Is No End to Love)” nods to the Beach Boys’ 1965 hit “Barbara Ann” and Bono’s affection for Brian Wilson. Family life is a source of uneasy sentiment: “Iris (Hold Me Close)“ references Bono’s mother; and “Cedarwood Road” is the street where he was raised and found friendship.
With contributions of five producers including Danger Mouse and Paul Epworth, the music hints at times at various stages of the band’s nearly four-decade history. Fed by Adam Clayton’s pounding bass, “Volcano“ finds the Edge reviving his guitar sound from the hit “Vertigo” released a decade ago. “Iris (Hold Me Close)” taps into the classic late ‘80s sound, with layers of the Edge’s guitars set against Larry Mullen’s toms and high hat; Clayton’s bass rattles and pumps at the bottom and seizes the mid-range when an opportunity arises. Something akin to the wah guitar of “Mysterious Ways” reemerges in the Strummer tribute.
That said, a varied, contemporary soundscape gives “Songs of Innocence” its brightest spark. “Cedarwood Road” veers quickly into meaty, pounding rock. Vocalist Lykke Li, strings and a phalanx of keyboards contribute to “The Troubles.” The brooding environment of “Raised by Wolves” conveys the hollowness after faith is lost. “Song for Someone” rises from the Edge’s gently picked folk guitar while the ballad “Sleep Like a Baby Tonight” is cleaved by his fat fuzzy guitar.
“Songs of Innocence” reveals itself as a pleasing, subtly adventurous work by a great band that knows how to tweak formula and manage risk.
Originally posted by New - LINK
U2 gives away its long awaited new album for free and it's possibly their most satisfying set in years, writes long-time follower Russell Baillie.
Back in the early days when iPods first came out, there was a special U2 edition one.
Today's launch of Apple's next-gen hardware came with more U2 product - their whole new album, free to all iTunes customers.
Yes, here it was a new U2 released pro Bono ... and Edge, and Larry and Adam.
There will be physical deluxe albums out on October 13 which should please the band's backers, especially after early studio sessions were scrapped.
As as far as recording industry stunts go, this giveaway is a biggie.
Sure Radiohead did it first, but there goes Ireland's balance of payments for the year, possibly.
True, much of the band's finances are based in the Netherlands, while Apple has a subsidiary in low-tax Eire which harvests much of the company's billions.
So if nothing else, giving this way to iTunes customers is a feat of creative accounting.
As for the album itself ... well Bono described it as "their most personal ever", albeit at a product launch for the world's biggest hardware company.
Many long-time followers of the band would agree there hasn't been truly a satisfying U2 album in years or indeed decades. This one sounds like it is.
No it's not The Joshua Tree II or a sequel to Achtung Baby. But after half a dozen listens, there's plenty that promises further rewards, especially the likes of Every Breaking Wave which should have thousands waving their Apple products aloft, should this album deliver a tour (where presumably the tickets won't be free).
And yes it is personal - there's a Bono essay in the liner notes, reflecting on his teenage years and the early years of the the band and a good read which joins the dots between the history and the songs.
The album itself does do some familiar recent U2 album things, like begin with an upbeat crunching opener that will inevitably become the first blast of a live setlist but which may never graduate to encore in later life.
But if the noughties U2 albums were a return to classic early U2 after the reinventions of the 90s - especially in the churning echoplex of The Edge's guitar - this sounds more textured.
It's an album which sounds built around the singer's familiar voice but the guitars are balanced by a small arsenal of keyboards - the ballad Sleep Like a Baby Tonight is pretty much all throbbing synthesizer beneath Bono's falsetto and quite the unsettling lullaby for it.
It's also an album where the meat and spuds men of the U2 rhythm section sound like they're finally breaking out into a sweat after all these years.
There's a quintet of producers credited in various configurations throughout the 11 tracks. But it's dominated by Danger Mouse - Brian Burton to his mum - whose gritty, groovy fairy dust has been sprinkled in the past across albums by the Black Keys (whose DM records took them from indie outsiders to stadium contenders) , his own Gnarls Barkley and Gorillaz, among others.
His touches are prominent on the likes of opening track The Miracle (of Joey Ramone), with its opening blast of fuzz guitar no doubt a reference to Johnny Ramone's scratchy Mosrite, even if there's a temptation to start humming Soft Cell's Tainted Love when it kicks in. Cedarwood Road gets a stuttering Black Keys/Led Zep riffery balanced out by a dreamy psychedelic pop swirl; while there's a soul-funk shapes being thrown on tracks like This is Where You Can Reach Me Now and the closing The Troubles.
And no, it appears The Troubles - a duet with Lykke Li- isn't about those troubles.
Though there are domestic politics on the agenda - Raised By Wolves, with its opening scene of an terrorist bombing, gets to be the Sunday Bloody Sunday of this, complete with guitars and hanging piano lines that echo that early anthem.
It might be personal yet but it's not self-absorbed. As well as the hat-tip to the Ramones, there's dedications to Joe Strummer on This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now, inspired by an early encounter with the Clash while California (There is No End of Love) starts off with a short Beach Boys vocal pastiche before putting the roof down and roaring off into the Malibu sunset.
The aforementioned Cedarwood Road is a reference to Bono's boyhood Dublin neighbourhood though the hard-edged song sounds as much a look back in anger as nostalgia.
The largely acoustic Song for Someone is the big ballad and possibly destined despite its ambiguous lyrics to be become the next U2 wedding hymn.
But the most obviously personal song is Iris (Hold Me Close) about Bono's mother who died when he was 14.
He's addressed his father's influence before on the lovely, hymnal Sometimes You Can't Make it On Your Own on 2004 album How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb.
Here, his ma's belated eulogy is exultant care of a song musically cut from a similar cloth as Where The Streets Have No Name/ One Tree Hill, but with beefed-up bass and lyrics that are affecting without being cloying.
In the liner notes, Bono talks about how he filled his mother's absence with music. It's a point I can sympathise with. This reviewer's Mum, also named Iris, died also when I was 14.
My favourite album of the following sad summer was Boy, the debut by a young Irish band who went on to bigger things.
So yes that song gets five stars all by itself. The rest is almost as great.
VERDICT: 4/5
Originally posted by Independent.co.uk - LINK
U2, Songs of Innocence, album review: Secure in their comfort-zone of stadium-sized yearning
At a time when it's getting harder to interest punters in paying for albums, the promotional hook is all-important for a certain rarefied level of performer.
Already widely compared to last year's surprise album release by Beyoncé, the sudden free-download arrival of Songs Of Innocence more accurately resembles her estranged husband Jay-Z's hook-up with Samsung to provide handset users with his last app/album, U2's generosity being heavily underwritten by Apple, a company keen to see off potential challengers to its iTunes music delivery system.
The lack of real originality in that gambit, some might say, reflects the undeniable sense of stasis in the music, as after nearly five years struggling to record a follow-up to the lacklustre No Line On the Horizon, they seem to have arrived back where they started, secure in the comfort-zone of stadium-sized yearning they perfected decades ago with The Joshua Tree.
Despite the involvement of producer Danger Mouse, the more experimental leanings of albums like Achtung Baby and Zooropa have been abandoned in favour of the all-too-familiar blend of vaunting, declamatory vocals and juddering guitar riffs; but sadly, that knack for irresistible pop hooks with which Danger Mouse helped hoist The Black Keys to superstar status is almost entirely absent here, restricted to just an occasional keyboard counter-melody like that on "California (There Is No End To Love)".
To be fair, the retro style may be a deliberate facet of the album concept, the Blakean title referring to the songs' backward glances at the band's more innocent, formative years, tackling the youthful obstacles posed by love, political awareness, ambition and aesthetics. It's a theme most successfully covered in the opener "The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)", an exuberant, joyously anthemic celebration of the transformative power of music - specifically, punk's impact on their teenage selves in a troubled Ireland, the sound that "made sense out of the world" for Bono.
Over crunching chords and an almost Burundi-esque drum tattoo, he briefly sketches the painful circumstances of the era, deciding that he "wanted to be the melody of a noise above the hurt". It's a great starter, but it raises expectations that the rest of the album struggles to fulfill; perhaps because, compared to its sense of righteous certainty, the other songs are wracked with doubt and uncertainty - as acknowledged in the notion of being "in love with defeat" tackled in "Every Breaking Wave": "We fear to win, and so we end before we begin".
"Song For Someone" restores the sense of typical U2 uplift, bordering on the full Coldplay with its cellphones-aloft chorus and affirmative attitude, and the routine Bono pleader "Iris (Hold Me Close)" features another of The Edge's vibrato-matic guitar riffs. The lurching bassline intro to "Volcano" offers a tantalising prospect of something different, but it turns out to be just another of those one-word-hook U2 riff-songs like "Vertigo", all propulsion and no depth: expect to hear it soundtracking explosive sports clips on a TV near you soon.
"Cedarwood Road", a location from Bono's youth, reflects upon adolescent emotional turmoil - "the hurt you hide, the joy you hold" - before "Sleep Like A Baby Tonight" offers the album's most musically ambitious arrangement, with a stately synth figure (sounding suspiciously like Kraftwerk's "Hall Of Mirrors") overlaid with strings and counterpoint piano and brusque interjections by a rasping, distorted guitar motif; as if emboldened by the astringent mix, Bono adds a perhaps ill-advised bizarre falsetto part midway through the track.
On the album's closing tracks, "This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now" and "The Troubles", the band tackle political violence, but with little of the impact and directness of, say, "Sunday Bloody Sunday".
Over repetitive piano and wah-wah guitar, the former track asserts a kind of positive disengagement from the horrors of the world, a generation-gap disgust which, to give them credit, could apply as readily to the broader current world situation as to the specific concerns of the '70s. It's a position reinforced by "The Troubles", which finds Bono announcing, "You can hurt me and then hurt me some more/I can live with denial, but you're not my troubles any more". Which rather begs the question: so whose troubles are they?
VERDICT: 3/5