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A RETURN TO FORM As an author myself I’ve noticed three kinds of reviews that populate web pages. Firstly the knee-jerk splenetic tirade which savages the film,book or recording and says absolutely nothing about the content. These are normally one or at best two star diatribes which say more about the reviewer than the product. U2 have been getting a lot of these. The second is the gushing fan obsessed swooning which calls everything the artist produces genius,brilliant or fantastic. U2 get a lot of these as well. Few sit down and bother to actually look at the work objectively and see does it succeed on its own terms, achieve what its makers set out to do. Hence I’ll try and do this with U2’s 14th platter Songs Of Experience. The first thing that struck me was the clever titles: Get Out Of Your Own Way,You’re The Best Thing About Me and Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way etc The second thing was the cover, two young people holding hands and no title except on the spine. (The b/w image is part of a short film by long-time collaborator Anton Corbijn who always shoots their publicity photos. It features Bono’s son and Edge’s daughter holding hands.) The third thing was that there are 13 tracks, to this listener one too many in the form of The Blackout which sonically sounds lumpen and has double references to bombing raids and the sort of Electricity Supply Board power cuts that haunted all our youths in 1960s Ireland. The reflective opening track Love Is All We Have Left sees a deeply rich voiced Bono mutating into the sort of vocal you would find on a Daft Punk or Air album. The song is about defiance in the face of adversity,in this case the death of Bono’s mother when he was only 14, a fact which still obviously burns. Lights Of Home is a joyous celebration of finding and knowing oneself crafted in a lovely stacked way, call and response vocals and some gorgeously rich guitar from The Edge. You’re The Best Thing About Me is the first of several songs about Bono’s lifelong relationship with his wife Ali. It’s a mid-tempo typical U2 celebration. It’s the second Ali song Landlady, that is the real killer. As lithe as a gymnast, the vocal spins around a lovely drum shuffle, the most minimal of guitar lines and lovely lyrics like “and when the doorbell rings,you tell me I have a key,I ask you how you know it’s me?” Three years in the making, nine producers and legendary studios like Hendrix’s old haunt Electric Lady and U2’s very own Windmill Lane have created a recording with a beautiful sheen. The second official single (though at least four songs have been released from the album) Get Out Of Your Own Way recalls the joyous rapture of 2000’s Beautiful Day and is destined for classic status. How the band finished this album amidst the huge six month, 51 city 30th anniversary Joshua Tree tour is nothing short of a miracle. Political change and Bono’s famous bike accident in Central Park in 2014 bleed into the work. The angriest song here, American Soul has some really sharding guitar work and features a declamatory rap intro by Kendrick Lamar. ‘Summer Of Love’ hops along at a jaunty pace, a lightly refreshing song with a nifty sparkling little riff that contains the enigmatic lines “I’ve been thinking about the West Coast,not the one that everyone knows”. Surprising thing is that this has nothing got to do with San Francisco but in fact is a song about the Syrian refugee crisis. The second surprise is that Lady Gaga sings backing vocals. Bono considers these songs love letters to all the people that are important to his life so far. On The Showman he sends up his own role as one of the most successful rock showmen ever. Those of you wanting that killer track, the one that lifts the album into the stratosphere well it comes in the form of The Little Things That Give You Away, an elastic bass, some lovely ambience at the beginning, the lines “cos you were talking at me and not to me”, the repetition of the word sometimes, the air of torment and facing mortality and way the whole thing just explodes at 3’50” with I swear Edge’s beautiful coda to 1987’s With Or Without You re-worked into a new song. In short U2’s new album is a magnificent return to form. What stopped this from getting five stars was the size and design of the sleevenotes, blue letters on a black background in a font so small I had to use a magnifying glass and reading glasses together to read them. Mark Prendergast (author of Irish Rock and The Ambient Century)Read full review
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