Sobre 5 :P

Otros habitualmente poco dados a elogiar a U2

Lo pongo aqui que estos malditos elitistas conservadores no se dejan leer por el mundo libre


Will Hodgkinson’s track-by-track review of Songs of Innocence

1. The Miracle (of Joey Ramone)

A straight-up rock song and a tribute to Bono’s early hero, complete with wordless chants and a heavily distorted guitar riff not dissimilar to the White Stripes. As Bono explains in the liner notes, Joey Ramone made it OK to be in a punk band and sing with tenderness… not that anyone ever mistook U2 for punk rebels.

2. Every Breaking Wave

A slow and moody number punctuated by a rising and falling bass line, this finds Bono in reflective mode, unconvincingly playing the underdog as he sings “every gambler knows that to lose is what you’re really there for” while the strings swell beneath his voice.

3. California (There Is No End to Love)

Beginning with some Beach Boys-style harmonising over the repeated words “Santa Barbara”, this is a tribute to U2’s first trip to California in a soft rock, 60s-tinged style.

4. Song for Someone

An acoustic, guitar-led, iPhones-in-the-air ballad, Song for Someone finds U2 at their most earnest, with some vaguely spiritual words about lights that never go out.

5. Iris (Hold Me Close)

Iris was Bono’s mother, who died when he was 14. The words reconcile a need for maternal love with the reality of losing one’s mother so young, while the music goes for U2’s trademark epic swell and doesn’t quite get there.

6. Volcano

Low distorted bass from Adam Clayton begins this tribute to the power of rock, which features the rather embarrassing line “you and I are rock’n’roll”. Good song, bad sentiment.

7. Raised by Wolves

The most impassioned track on the album, Raised by Wolves tells the story of the Dublin car bombings of 1974, which killed 33 people, from the perspective of Bono’s friend Andy Rowen, who witnessed the carnage and later turned to heroin to deal with it. The Edge’s jagged guitar lines underpin words about how “the worst things in the world are justified by belief”.

8. Cedarwoood Road

Named after the street where Bono grew up in Dublin, this is another moody rocker, this time concerned with the disparity between the comfort of childhood memories and the domestic violence going on behind respectable closed doors.

9. Sleep Like a Baby Tonight

U2 have rarely sounded so minimal, or experimental, as on here. The song begins with nothing more than a single keyboard note, before strings and background harmonies rise as Bono conjures up the lonely, eerie quality of the early hours on poetic lines like “tomorrow dawns like someone else’s suicide”.

10. This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now

Written in tribute to Joe Strummer, another early hero for the band, the song is a tacit acknowledgement of U2’s debt to wilder talents. “We’ve come to colonise your night and steal your poetry,” Bono admits, against a blend of funky guitar and soulful harmonies.

11. The Troubles

The Swedish singer Lykke Li gives a haunting opening to the best song on the album, which is not about Ireland’s Troubles, but those in Bono’s heart as he tried to reconcile feelings of anger and confusion caused by the early death of his mother with his love for his wife Ali, whom he also met when he was 14.

Overall verdict: Four stars

Songs of Innocence has no With or Without You or Where The Streets Have No Name. It isn’t fuelled by the righteous anger of 1983’s War or the world conquering ambition of 1987’s The Joshua Tree, but it is personal and heartfelt, a rock-based reflection on love, childhood and getting older that suits the band in their late career stage.