- Label
- Mercury
- Release date
- 2nd March 2009
- Genre
- Rock
- Buy this album
- Order CD
Self-appointed biggest band in the world return with album worthy of the hype.
After two utterly unmemorable albums – the point of which only seemed to be to add a couple of singles to the next Greatest Hits package – U2 have finally returned with an album that’s worth buying. Not that things looked great when we first heard the lead single Get On Your Boots, with its echoes of Discothèque, the last time U2 tried to be funky, camp and ironic.
What U2 are good at isn’t irony or fun, it’s making big sweeping epic music. The kind of thing that goes well with footage of helicopters swooping over canyons and mountainsides. And the first half of the album more than delivers on this front – Moment Of Surrender, Unknown Caller and Magnificent all bask in Edge’s chiming guitar, huge blustering crescendos and Bono’s heroic gestures.
After the skyscraping the mid section of Boots, I’ll Go Crazy If I Don’t Go Crazy Tonight and Stand Up Comedy act as a short pop interlude before the final section’s open spaces, preachy pseudo religous babble and old man rock atmospherics.
In brief then this is a proper album with catchy bits, boring bits and preachy bits – all of which make it their best since Achtung Baby.
More to try:
David Bowie: Low
Simple Minds: New Gold Dream
Coldplay: Viva la Vida
David Byrne and Brian Eno: Everything That Happens Will Happen Today
