Originally posted by TheRefugee:Fuck Pitchfork. Did anyone really expect U2 to get an unprejudiced review? Do you really think the reviewer would be brave enough to hang around the P4K watercooler/coffee house and look his skinny jean wearing sculpted beard face furnitured hipster colleagues in the eyes after giving a positive review? Fuck Pitchfork. The irony is that P4K is as much of a past-its-prime trend setter behemoth as it seems to think U2 is.
Ratings are nonsense where a subjective appreciation of art is concerned, how absurd would it be for some art critic to give Michelangelo's David a 7.3, but the Mona Lisa an 8.1, etc. (I'm not putting U2 on such a lofty pedestal, just ilustrating a point)
Trust your own ears, head, heart and gut. Music is food for the soul and mine is well nourished by SOI. Fuck Pitchfork.
"writing about music is like dancing about architecture" - Martin Mull.
So Songs Of Innocence doesn’t have any ideas, and there’s no rawness in its production. Fine. It could still be a good U2 album. All That You Can’t Leave Behind was short on ideas and intensity, too, and it’s still the moment U2 gracefully transitioned to elder-statesman status. And maybe Songs Of Innocence could’ve worked like that one did. If only the band had managed to come up with some fucking choruses. What happened to these guys? They used to be capable of melodies that could swallow up the world. But there’s not one single chorus on Songs Of Innocence that I could hum at gunpoint, even after keeping the thing on repeat since it came out. The buildups to the choruses are often quite nice. “Raised By Wolves” is an effectively tense churn until the guitar squawks and Bono starts bleating about being “stronger than feeeeuh.” “Iris (Hold Me Close)” sounds like a classic midtempo U2 ballad, Edge’s guitar rippling the way it always should, until we reach the payoff of a bunch of buried voices muttering “oooh weee-uhh weee-uhhh.” “California (There Is No End To Love)” has some nifty doo-wop stuff going on in the intro, but its hook is one big wet fart. I don’t get it. This band never had any trouble delivering on the big tension-release moment. But this time, they just can’t pay anything off. When these songs get to the part where they should soar, they just sputter and die.
Originally posted by KieranU2:This happens all the time in music journalism – a critic will have a personal vendetta against a certain artist because of one asepct; in this case being "Bono is a wanker." I agree that you can't hate an artist for that, it's simply unwarranted.
But what is happening here is that a lot of you are jumping on the U2 hardcore fan wagon and are defending U2 at every corner. Try and look at it from a realistically critical point of view yourself. Of course there will be a lot of reviews based on the generic opinion of U2 and the unnecessary hatred of Bono, but a lot of it will be cogent analysis. The album isn't perfect, they've had two of those already and will probably never replicate those golden years that occurred many moons ago. It's a valiant effort but it has flaws: should have been wholly Danger Mouse, can be too synthy at points, few typical cringey moments here and there etc. If I was rating it, it'd be 6 or 7 if I was in a critical situation – e.g. writing for Pitchfork, Guardian etc. But I'd try hard to be impartial and not talk utter bollocks like NME.
Originally posted by KieranU2:This happens all the time in music journalism – a critic will have a personal vendetta against a certain artist because of one asepct; in this case being "Bono is a wanker." I agree that you can't hate an artist for that, it's simply unwarranted.
But what is happening here is that a lot of you are jumping on the U2 hardcore fan wagon and are defending U2 at every corner. Try and look at it from a realistically critical point of view yourself. Of course there will be a lot of reviews based on the generic opinion of U2 and the unnecessary hatred of Bono, but a lot of it will be cogent analysis. The album isn't perfect, they've had two of those already and will probably never replicate those golden years that occurred many moons ago. It's a valiant effort but it has flaws: should have been wholly Danger Mouse, can be too synthy at points, few typical cringey moments here and there etc. If I was rating it, it'd be 6 or 7 if I was in a critical situation – e.g. writing for Pitchfork, Guardian etc. But I'd try hard to be impartial and not talk utter bollocks like NME.
Originally posted by KieranU2:This happens all the time in music journalism – a critic will have a personal vendetta against a certain artist because of one asepct; in this case being "Bono is a wanker." I agree that you can't hate an artist for that, it's simply unwarranted.
But what is happening here is that a lot of you are jumping on the U2 hardcore fan wagon and are defending U2 at every corner. Try and look at it from a realistically critical point of view yourself. Of course there will be a lot of reviews based on the generic opinion of U2 and the unnecessary hatred of Bono, but a lot of it will be cogent analysis. The album isn't perfect, they've had two of those already and will probably never replicate those golden years that occurred many moons ago. It's a valiant effort but it has flaws: should have been wholly Danger Mouse, can be too synthy at points, few typical cringey moments here and there etc. If I was rating it, it'd be 6 or 7 if I was in a critical situation – e.g. writing for Pitchfork, Guardian etc. But I'd try hard to be impartial and not talk utter bollocks like NME.