Illinois Entertainer October 2014 | Seite 32

INTERPOL
EL Pintor

IRISH SPAMMERS

U2
Songs Of Innocence
(Universal/Interscope)
It's quite possible U2 has never met a
grand gesture they couldn't embrace. So on
September 9th 2014, anyone with an iTunes
account woke to discover that the Irish
quartet had place their new album in their
libraries like a digital Christmas present
under a laptop douglas fir.
As with most things this band does, the
results were predictably polarizing, with
ebullient jubilation on one end, outright
hostility on the other and all stops in
between. The believers claimed it was to
good to be true and the haters screamed
that music had been reduced to spam landing in your junk mail. After the commercial
disappointment of 2009's No Line On The
Horizon record, U2 was now ensconced
between the ears of 500 million potential
listeners. As far as product placement goes,
there is simplistic brilliance when your
marketing plan is to just hit "send."
The 11 tracks feel like an amalgamation
of their entire career, neatly divided into
two nearly equal halves. The first single
"The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone) is an homage to the late punk rocker, and although
the band seems to have gone out of its way
to not emulate The Ramones ferocious,
glue huffing aesthetic, its does feature
some of The Edge's scuzziest guitar to date.
It reeks of blatant idol worship (lead singer
Bono emotes "Heard a sound that made
some sense out of the world"), which

would seem to further enforce the cliché of
"music saved my life." Considering how far
they traveled because of it, it's all evidence
to the contrary.
Songs like "Every Breaking Wave,"
"Song For Someone,' and "Iris (Hold Me
Close) play to the bands strengths. The
rhythm section of Adam Clayton (bass)
and Larry Mullen Jr. (drums) provide
grooves which swing effortlessly from mid
tempo gallop to supple restraint, providing
the bedrock for Bono to deliver throatily,
already thinking about how to reach the
cheap seat at the