Originally posted by Edi:Ok, if you are going to be controversial, IMHO SOE is a masterpiece (with the 4 extra tracks, Book of Your Heart in particular)) and SOI is one of their worst albums. It took many complete listens for me to get into it...it was hard work but I began to understand it.
On the other hand I would argue that SOI only had 2 good tracks (Iris, Cedarwood Road). SOE is full of messages about love and as evidenced in the recent shows, U2 have always been about love.
I do agree about Little Things and Lights (but not RFD), however there are so many other great tracks on there albeit a couple of lame ones.
Some songs have developed really well live. Summer of Love is better in almost all it's non-album forms (live, multiple re-mixes). GOOYOW is much better this year live than when I saw it last November.
I did a more coherent rationale elsewhere but these are my current thoughts.
Originally posted by RememberEveryMoment:Both albums have the tunes, but the problem with SOI is that it sounds very flat and overproduced. I really like this album and it absolutely worked live, but SOE sounds more dynamic. With regards to coherence I agree SOI feels more like a story while SOE mostly has different parts (Love is All - Lights of Home, GOYOW-AS, SoL-RfD, Love is Bigger-13) that work great together. At the end of the day SoE feels more as a complete U2 album with very high highs to whereas on earlier records this two decades there are always a couple of stinkers/average songs. I think SOE is their best outing since Zooropa, and will probably rank as my 4th favourite U2 record at this moment.
Originally posted by TheEdge10:What I love about SOE isn’t how “hard it rocks” or any sort of new sound they were going for, as it does admittedly sound like standard U2 for the most. What makes this album stand out is how personal the lyrics and stories are and how much of themselves the band (especially Bono) put into the songs. It’s actually become my third favourite U2 album (behind AB and JT). I can understand why this album has been divisive, as it doesn’t offer too too much that we haven’t heard before in terms of sound, production, etc., and with a few songs it does sound like they’re going for a hit, but the quality of the songwriting is just so good - much better than SOI in my opinion (with the exception of Iris and EBW), as well as everything they’ve done for a long time.
Controversial opinion: every SOI-SOE connection (Iris-Lights of Home, SFS-13, Volcano-American Soul, might be others I’m missing) is FAR better on SOE