The first time I heard Brian Burton (aka Danger Mouse) was his huge The Grey Album, wittily and cleverly mashing up The Beatles White with Jay Z’s Black, it made him an immediate star and pretty soon he reached the apex of his career with Cee Lo Green -long before green had morphed into a misogynistic angry dwarf, with Gnarls Barkley, a soul pop group with all the energy and good vibes missing from his current iteration as half of the dastardly Broken Bells.
And certainly superior to the simultaneously over produced and underwritten Songs Of Innocence by biggest band in the world today U2. Songs Of Innocence, a recherchez de Dublin perdu with stop offs at Joey Ramone on “The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)” -who taught Bono how to sing melody, and Joe Strummer on “This Is Where You can Reach Me Now” -who taught U2 how to play on stage and Brian Wilson on “California (There Is No End To Love”)” -who taught Danger Mouse how to multi track voices singing “Sail On Barbara Ann” while missing the spirit of the Beach Boys by so much it is almost beyond belief.
All three of these songs summon the past with no ability to emulate or at least equate it. All three songs are not very good. It isn’t quite that they’re bad, well, actually the Joey Ramone song is bad, but the other two are just middling and indifferent like the album they come off. The thing is, the muse has passed U2 by on these songs. I don’t doubt U2’s sincerity and I do appreciate that as far as this band is concerned, the five years of gestation has allowed the band to emerge with an album that doesn’t tower over you with bloated ego. But the songs are indifferent. The playing is ace, less is more for the Edge and the band mesh very well without getting sidetracked by modern technology. Everything they use from Danger Mouse -and Paul epworth and Ryan Tedder, both of who owe a lot to U2 and both of who repay it, is to make the band sound bigger but not larger, if you see what I mean. As big as this is, it is a clash of sound and tracks, the band sound like a band, more becomes less in an attempt to sound as good as they can.
Bono and the band play in the sandbox of technology and nostalgia to shed light on their now but the songs fail em. The melodies don’t grab hold, the playing is maybe too self contained, the Edge makes you wait four songs before earning his pay on the best in class “Song For Someone” and nothing here towers over the album and not one song equals “Get On Your Boots” on the much worse overall No Line On Horizon. The odd thing about Songs of Innocence is it seems to answer complaints about U2’s antagonistic egotism which seemed to really hurt their 21st Century output. Every song and every moment they’ve recorded in the past nearly fifteen years has been huge, it has insisted upon being bigger than it is. But here U2 narrow their focus to their youth and it keeps Bono deeply focused.
The result is a well earned song dedicated to Bono’s Mom who died in 1974, “Iris (Hold me close)”. By keeping to the very and intensely personal (and with the luck of his Mommy’s name), he manages a song of loss and love beyond death that connects well for mothers and sons, it is a Universal mother’s day card but for once I am not trying to slight the lyricist, he does what he tried to, make the personal Universal.
But even that song isn’t very good.
Look at it this way: if you don’t like U2 you are not going to like Songs Of Innocence and if you do love U2 you are gonna love but if you are a casual fan who wait every five years to catch em at a stadium, this album won’t do it. It doesn’t put them back on top. There is no “Mysterious Ways”, indeed there is nothing remotely close to “Stuck in a Moment You Can’t Get Out Of”. And U2 have abdicated the charts entirely, even the singles charts, by giving it away for free on ITunes. Bono had claimed he wanted to know if the band were still relevant but he knows the answer and dodged it publicly by giving the album away. This album couldn’t be a hit because there isn’t a hit on the sucker. The best songs, “Breaking Wave”and “Song For Someone” are minor league Bono. When I heard the songs Bono and The Edge wrote for the Spiderman musical debacle, I thought they were being lazy but I don’t think that now. It is all they are capable of. This week alone there are better new releases by Justin Townes earle, Ryan Adams, Tricky, Meghan Traimor, Loudon Wainwright III and more. THIS WEEK.
Still Horizon was a terrible album and Songs of Innocence isn’t. It actually reminds of an album it is significantly better than, Broken Bells After The Disco, there is something disquieting and a little disturbed about it. U2s stories of innocence isn’t giving them much pleasure. It isn’t a happy album. Perhaps because when it gets past punk and surf, it finds a dead mother, Priest Pedophiles and bloody Sundays.
By the end of the album, with Lykki Li singing “Somebody stepped inside your soul” and the kicker “somebody else is in control” on the most U2 like on the album “Trouble” there is at least the sense that U2 haven’t completely wasted five years of their life. If they had released this in 2010 it might have redeemed Horizon, but so long after the fact? It isn’t gonna do much except fill arenas.
Grade: C+
