![]() However, new takes on far too many of the songs ( Sunday Bloody Sunday, Beautiful Day) are so pointless that you can almost hear Larry making the coffee in the background. ![]() On the same song, Bono also finally corrects his confusion between ante-meridiem and post-meridiem. Walk On is now dedicated to Ukraine and the new version of Pride now mentions the tragedy of Alan Kurdi. The Miracle of Joey Ramone (Bono doing his northside Jamaican impression) is almost completely overhauled. The Edge steps off his array of pedals and sticks mostly to keyboards, acoustic guitar, and dulcimer, the engine room of Adam and Larry purrs, and doesn’t prowl and lo! Bono’s anguished bellow is now in a lower register or a falsetto. Always a spiritual experience for their fans, many of these reworked tracks come bathed in a luminous religiosity. This reckoning between Old Testament U2 and New Testament U2 sees stentorian anthems become skeletal re-edits with ambience and atmosphere as the watchword. Pre-order the album and listen to 'Pride' now. This is a rather good spot of musical feng shui and many of these artfully rearranged songs are now freighted with a sense of mortality, existentialism, and fond wistfulness for youth. Clever, eh?īut as this long album develops, things crystallise, and SOS begins to make some kind of sense. It starts with One and, some weeks later (ok, two hours and 46 minutes later), it ends with 40. ![]() Of course, the early signs were not good, with the reworkings of One and Pride provoking more head scratching than head nodding, I mean, didn’t big acts used to do this kind of thing on something called MTV Unplugged?Īnyway, you’ve heard of Taylor’s Version. There is something vaguely vampiric about the whole enterprise but ironically this is the best thing U2 have done in years And sprawling and wayward and surplus to requirements.Īs U2 see it, this mammoth near-three-hour album is the sound of the veteran band re-evaluating their long career as citizens of the world and looking back on the callow youths of the late seventies and adding gravitas to tracks that were charming in their nativity all those years ago.īut for a band who make much of the currency of relevance, is it wise to treat your own back catalogue as if it were the great American songbook? Hell, I’d sooner see U2 sing the great American songbook than cannibalise their own work. Songs of Surrender was originally intended as a neat piece of cross-pollination with the singer’s book, but this being U2, a band who just can’t help themselves, it has become something much bigger. Please review their details and accept them to load the content. We need your consent to load this Spotify content We use Spotify to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. A primer for Bono's stadium lounge lizard act in Vegas later this year? Why are they reupholstering forty of their own songs? Is it an act of craven vanity from a band who have demolished and then rebuilt their own myth? A sign that, yes, the wheels have finally come off one of the most well-oiled rock machines in history. What, you might very reasonably ask, are U2 up to? ![]() U2, that most widescreen of bands, are stripped back to a minimalistic intimacy on this mammoth career retrospective
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