1972Murat said:
Kieran said:
U2's new album is free to download on iTunes.
I downloaded it.
I can see why it's free... :nono
Joshua Tree is the first CD I have purchased in my life (it was all tapes before and LPs) and it is still my favorite U2 album. They are a great band and they have reinvented themselves so many times to stay relevant that they sound like a different band now. I am not against it. In fact, I find it much better than a band repeating themselves for ever.
I have not listened to the new album yet but will check it out.
Joshua Tree is defintely a great album, but their output (an album every 5 or 6 years) is puny, and I think they're very conservative in how they innovate, if you know what I mean. It's like there's a committee, or a factory, at work, sculpting a product that's so carefully crafted to click the right boxes, that any spontaneity or musical joy is crunched and crushed underneath.
I saw them in Dublin a few years back, cost us €100 each, and then they beamed up on their gigantic screen that if we texted such a number, we'd donate €5 to their hokey One charity. The music finally began to grind into a clap-along semblance of a rawk concert, when the computers overhead kicked in and quit the vid for Pride, leaving Bono to preach about some hen in a foreign prison, while we were still howling the oh-woh-woh bits at the end of the song.
He couldn't sing With or Without You. He prowled about it, like he was bluffing. Larry left his drum kit at one stage - but the drummin' kept comin'. It was difficult to know what was pre-recorded and what was live. Midway through the encore, me and my pal began to yell, "Bruuuuuuce" in honour of the Boss, who we'd recently seen, and who we couldn't help but think was the definition of a proper lead man. When we left the gig, everybody was orderly and calm, and nobody looked like they'd just had an epiphany.
Yours, etc.
Disillusioned, from Dublin
