#take a big fucking guess who the boombox was inspired by

[toontownportraits]

woo woo dance dance.png

[athousandheartsattack]

I started paying real attention to music in 1989. I was at summer camp and I taped two U2 albums, War and Unforgettable Fire, on someone’s boombox that had two cassette players so you could make tape copies (also, later on that same summer, I bought The Cure’s Boys Don’t Cry, my first purchased cassette). I was 14 years old. I listened to Unforgettable Fire a lot, War not so much (I got into that album much later) but at the time I gravitated towards The Cure more. It isn’t until Achtung Baby (an album that, over 25 years later, still gets tons of play in my home) that I fell in love. Every U2 album released since then has, on first listen, been a letdown. They’ll never make Achtung Baby again. It is a messy, beautiful, dark, noisy masterpiece. Let’s do the post AB rundown: Zooropa has a few classics but also has many (too many) throwaway tracks. Pop is admirable in its bold attempt at, basically, anti-pop pop, but I still can’t make up my mind about whether or not it’s any good (I like it, though I spent years unable to stand it). All That You Can’t Leave Behind was well received because it basically wasn’t Pop, but it’s a bland album that has very few keepers (I’m a guy who cannot stand Elevation, but there’s no denying Beautiful Day is great). How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb is a great late U2 offering (what a great album title!) and while it’s uneven – especially in the back half – it has some truly amazing songs and renewed my faith that the band was capable of greatness. Then they release No Line On The Horizon, which is their worst album by a mile. It opens AMAZINGLY well, the first few moments of the title track are a burst of great, noisy guitar and really dynamic singing and everything works so goddamn well and then they shit the bed with a chorus that stops the momentum of the song dead. The album never recuperates. It has songs that range from “it’s ok, I guess” to “awful”. I love this band, but there you have it. Here’s the funny thing, though: that album is bookended by the release of two U2 classic singles: Window In The Sky, a fantastic single released in 2006 that was never on any album, and the powerful Invisible, released in 2014 as a single and later showing up as a hidden song on the deluxe edition of their next album, Songs Of Innocence. Again, both of these tracks are top of the shelve U2. Just when you think that’s it, they’re out of ideas; they give you a nugget of gold to prove you wrong. This brings us to Songs Of Innocence, and album best described as fine. It has some good songs, no classics, and a few throwaways on the b side. So the post Achtung Baby U2 is a band that is easy to love (they keep coming up with great singles) and easy to be let down by (other than Atomic Bomb – which comes closest to being a fully great album - most of those albums are good to great EPs padded up to long players with a handful of disposable tracks…)

And this all leads us to Songs Of Experience, their best, most even album since Achtung Baby. Not as good as AB, but what a relief to hear a U2 album with no skippable tracks. Not a one. The quality varies, they’re not all classics, but there’s nothing on here that makes me ashamed of liking that band (I’m looking at you, Stand Up Comedy). So let’s have at it, shall we?

It’s earnest. I think that’s what I like the most about it. It wears it all on its sleeve. It’s fragile and vulnerable and scared and angry and in love and thankful and happy and romantic and loving. So it’s cheesy. It’s corny. Three songs have the word “love” in the title. There’s a lot of talk about the power of love all over these songs. To me that’s a good thing. I like cheesy, my friends know this. Show me a teen movie third act victorious prom scene and I will cry, guaranteed. So I’m fine with someone one belting out that Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way. You, however, might not be. This is my review. Go be cynical somewhere else.

Another thing that will maybe put some people off is how clean and safe the album is. This is a white glove album. Nothing here will upset anyone. U2 have done stuff in the past that, umm, flustered some folks (I won’t get into any of that here, this is about the music) so I think they had a very strong desire to please. That being said, this is superb, efficient song writing. So let’s talk about the songs. All of them. Yes, this will be that type of review.

The album opener is called Love Is All We Have Left. It’s great. It reminds me of Unforgettable Fire era U2, more specifically its B side. It’s a subdued, short song (under three minutes) with no drums and no guitar (unless it’s heavily filtered and I didn’t recognize it as such). Just strings, voice and studio fidgiting. It’s lovely and earnest and full of grace. Maybe it’s cheesy. It’s a fantastic start to the album. It also has the only weird, out of left feel move on the entire album: on the second verse the voice is auto-tuned. I love it. It feels a little like Bon-Iver, maybe. It works, and when the voice returns to swoon us into its chorus, it’s all the more effective. Might not be everyone’s cup of tea, though.

That is followed by Lights Of Home, which is kind of part Rolling Stones, part White Stripes, with a great gospel bridge at the end. Simple chords with no showy effects. I think it would have fit nicely on Rattle And Hum, an album I really like. The Haim sisters are on this track. I really like the gospel bit.

You’re The Best Thing About me is the weakest song on the album, but it has such a great, catchy and infectious chorus that I can’t skip it. I’m just not crazy about how it starts, but I like everything after those first 30 seconds. There’s a lovely bit of The Edge singing (who, by the way, does stellar backing vocal almost throughout the album) towards the end, something about someone needing to be loved quietly, which I think is beautiful.

Get Out Of Your Own Way is stadium-sized U2. A big, Beautiful Day-style anthem full of hooks that, like some other songs on this album, could be faulted with trying a little too hard, but I like that. It’s better than not trying at all (and in U2’s defence it has never felt, in 40+ years of making music, like they didn’t care about the music they are making. These guys try, like, all the damn time). That song ends (and the next one starts) with a powerful guest spot by Kendrik Lamar. I’m just mentioning this. Maybe you like him? He’s there.

American Soul is GREAT. I loooove how that song starts: Kendrik Lamar says what he has to say and then some big, fat, dirty chords are banged out of a guitar, it feels like White Stripes again, with the drum pounding in time. Just two chords. Bam-Bam. Then silence. Then two more. BAM-BAM. Then two more again. Then the song takes off. An angry, anti-Trump, pro-refugee, pro America (the inspiring, idea of America, not the travesty of that dream that’s on the news every fucking day). That song is the first of two songs that borrow from Songs Of Innocence. In this case the chorus is taken straight from a bridge in the song Volcano. It is used better here, in a song that is better than Volcano. This happens again on the album closer, we’ll get to that in a bit.

Summer Of Love is a great little diddy, with a beautiful vocal melody and simple chords stripped once again of the big fat pedals effects that The Edge is normally so fond of. The song is great, it never goes for epicness, it never tries to be more than what it is. Just a lovely little song. Well written, everyone in the band understanding where this thing needs to go (this is true of the entire album: it is played by a band whose members are all on the same page about tone and feeling and purpose, it shows). I have a criticism, though. In the middle of the song there is a switch. It’s good. The guitar becomes a bit distorted (just a bit, calm down) and the vocals become more dramatic for a bit and then the song returns to its status quo in a formidable bit of manoeuvering and strings come in and it’s all good, but that initial switch is a bit weird. It feels like another song was tacked onto the one you’re listening to. It’s a rushed bit of mixing. But that doesn’t kill the song, it’s just a transition that maybe could’ve been smoother. Or maybe that’s how they want this to sound, who am I to judge?

Red Flag day is one of the stand-out tracks from the album (certainly from the A side – the B-side of this album is unbelievably strong). This song sounds like War-era U2. It feels rebellious and youthful. The guitar and bass hooks are so fucking good. Very propulsive. Again, very simple chords, very little effects. Just good song writing.

I love the next song so much, but some people won’t stomach it I think. It’s called The Showman (Little More Better) and it sounds like early Beatles. For real. It’s a light, insanely catchy little pop gem that hasn’t failed to put a smile on my face since my first listen. Maybe U2 aren’t supposed to do Beatles-type songs, but here I am, glad that they did.

The Little Things That Give You Away is a highlight for me. It could fit on Achtung Baby (after So Cruel or something). It starts off slow and builds up to one of the most classic, chill-inducing U2 moments on the album. It starts like something on Unforgettable Fire, with vague (but beautiful) echo-y guitar melodies that support the gorgeous vocal work. The chorus is achingly melancholic, and the final bridge builds and builds until you realize your feet aren’t touching the ground anymore. Definitely a keeper.

Landlady is a love letter from Bono to his wife. It has a classic U2-sounding guitar, think Unforgettable Fire and Joshua Tree, a lovely vocal melody, and a lot of respect, love and gratitude. It’s another one that doesn’t strive for big anthemic swells of melody, it is content to just be as beautiful as possible. What is interesting is that they could have easily made that song bigger, the final third begs to escalate, but the restraint is more powerful.

The Blackout is another rocker like American Soul. It is very much Adam Clayton’s song (the bass is so good). It has a good sing-along chorus but everytime you get back to the verse the song shines more. It’s fist-pumping, feet-stomping rock and roll. They have been trying to write that song for a long time, it seems (what with the Vertigos, the Get On Your Boots and so on) and here it feels like they know what they have is special.

Love Is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way, the penultimate song on the record, will test you. It is really, sublimely cheesy. I like it a lot. I find that there is something defiant in being so boldly hopeful in these difficult times, to place all you have on the unstoppable, all-consuming urgency of love. The song is filled with gorgeous melodies, but there is, in particular, a chant that happens towards the end of the song that is so joyful, so buoyantly optimistic in the face of adversity, that it lifts the entire thing a mile into the sky. This is, once again, really big U2.

The album closes with 13 (There Is A Light). This is the second song to borrow from Songs Of Innocence, this time they re-purpose the entire chorus of Song For Someone, and once again I believe the end result is more powerful. This song mirrors the tone of the album opener. It is more atmospheric, with Bono quietly crooning to a slow subtle emotional build that pays off in beauty but not flamboyance. The song never gets big, it gets softly magnificent. Its restraint is resplendent. It’s a perfect way to end the album.