1. Originally posted by mattfromcanada:I've never understood why Stand Up Comedy didn't take off (quite liked it, feel it could have been a rocker) and I've always felt Crazy album version was grossly under-appreciated. When I first heard it I was like "Ah, there's U2".
    Love Stad up Comedy, especially the musical backing is a great, "sexy" rocker. A different l"theme" and lyrics could have made that a worthy successor of HMTMKMKM..

    Crazy tonight is "classic U2" but with weird-fitting lyrics, reminds me of "Somedays are better than others"...
  2. SUC is the worst over produced track in the U2 Canon. Doesn't fit at all on the album and is like a sore thumb.

    #sucKS
  3. I don't want to come across negative but that's what it is. It's like all of the studio creations on October that were never played live rolled into one.
  4. Originally posted by miryclay:SUC is the worst over produced track in the U2 Canon. Doesn't fit at all on the album and is like a sore thumb.

    #sucKS
    Have to agree, like what was mentioned earlier. NLOTH should have been released with the following songs as a side project in the spirit of Coldplay's Everyday Life.

    .No Line On The Horizon
    .Magnificent
    .Unknown Caller
    .Moment Of Surrender
    .Winter
    .White As Snow
    .Breathe
    .Fez-Being Born
    .Cedars Of Lebanon
  5. Also I hear a similar riff in Cedarwood Road to Stand Up Comedy, like Cedarwood is a much better realised version than that laboured tune. In my opinion anyway.
  6. Originally posted by melon51:[..]
    Love Stad up Comedy, especially the musical backing is a great, "sexy" rocker. A different l"theme" and lyrics could have made that a worthy successor of HMTMKMKM..

    Crazy tonight is "classic U2" but with weird-fitting lyrics, reminds me of "Somedays are better than others"...
    Seems to me the prevailing thought here is the flow of the album, and these two particular songs are collateral damage of it.

    @Miryclay, would you have liked either if they were on say HTDAATB or SOI (the bookend albums respectively, pretending that each is either the leftovers from one or beginnings of the other)?
  7. Originally posted by EridescoFly:Also I hear a similar riff in Cedarwood Road to Stand Up Comedy, like Cedarwood is a much better realised version than that laboured tune. In my opinion anyway.
    Yeah I hear that. Maybe it is.
  8. Originally posted by popmarter:[..]
    That's a really odd rating Magnificent ,Stand up Comedy and Breathe are definitely worth more than that were you drunk when you wrote that


    Haha! Unfortunately not!

    I've posted at great length about this, but I have a theory that NLOTH was at one point a very different album, a very quiet, reflective, almost meditative - and somewhat experimental and intimate album - but halfway through the recording of it the band decided to do the MASSIVE WORLDWIDE 360 TOUR and realized "oh shit, we have songs like Winter, White as Snow, Cedars of Lebanon, etc. - but we don't have any stadium boppers" - hence the songs you mentioned and half of the others on the album.

    You don't have to take my word for it though:

    In pre-release interviews, U2 compared the extent of their expected shift in musical style to that of Achtung Baby.The band scaled back these experimental pursuits, however; Mullen, Jr. noted, "at a certain stage, reality hits, and you go, 'What are we gonna do with this stuff?' Are we going to release this sort of meandering experimentation, or are we gonna knock some songs out of this?" Bono shared this opinion, stating, "We went so far out on the Sufi singing and the sort of ecstatic-music front, that we had to ground it and find a counterpoint." Eno commented that many of "the more contemplative and sonically adventurous songs" had been dropped, attributing the lack of African-inspired music to its sounding "synthetic" and unconvincing when paired with other songs


    NLOTH to me is a mediocre album with a really fucking great album buried within. If you look at these songs:

    Fez - Being Born
    Winter
    White As Snow
    Moment of Surrender
    Cedars Of Lebanon

    There's a quality within them that isn't really found across the rest of the album, and a lot of that quality (to me) is derived from the fact that they sound nothing like anything else U2 has done - and also the fact that there's some courage in those tunes in that they aren't what people expect from U2.

    I think NLOTH could've been an album that was quieter, more ambient, experimental, and focused a lot on the lyricism and creating music to surround these perspectives- rather than being an album that was HALF that, and half "standard classic rock U2 post-2000" stuff. After ATYCLB and HTDAAB, we didn't need Get On Your Boots, we didn't need Stand Up Comedy, we didn't need Breathe - we needed songs like Cedars of Lebanon, White as Snow, Winter, etc. It's either that they chickened out, or prioritized the 360 tour experience over the album, or both. Either way, for me personally, NLOTH could be renamed "missed opportunity" and it'd be more accurate.

    If you're into those tracks - more power to you. It's not as though I hate songs like Magnificent, or hate the album at all - it's just that I can't help but think of what could've been when I think of it - particularly because the evidence of "what could have been" is still on the album in some form. It's super jarring to me when you go from a song like Get On Your Boots to a song like White as Snow on the same album. They don't fit together at all, to me.
  9. Originally posted by miryclay:SUC is the worst over produced track in the U2 Canon. Doesn't fit at all on the album and is like a sore thumb.

    #sucKS
    Have you listened to SOE? lol
  10. Really great insights @RattleandHum1988

    I just finished listening to 'In Your Honour' by Foo Fighters, which is itself a double album - one hard & rocking, one acoustic and pulled back. Maybe NLOTH took the "best" from each part and made a single album. Maybe it could have been a great double album theme, and maybe they had been working on something like that, which morphed into iNNOCENCE and eXPERIENCE.

    I think I'll make a playlist of the revised 'NLOTH' and giv'r a go.
  11. Originally posted by miryclay:I don't want to come across negative but that's what it is. It's like all of the studio creations on October that were never played live rolled into one.
    I just took the lead vocal out.. Think it sounds much better that way, what do you think

  12. You did a good job of removing the lead vocal. I'd be interested to know how you did it?

    Personally, I like the lead vocal the way it is and I've really started to enjoy listening to this song recently. I'd be interested to hear it live.