1. Gave the Linear track listing a listen. Unknown Caller should have opened 360.
  2. Never caught this before, the guys working out "Magnificent" as a jam.

  3. Originally posted by bpt3:I've said before, but still have this mad theory that NLOTH is actually the thematic centerpiece of their five 2000s-present day output of albums. I might need to quick set this out again to see if it still makes sense...

    The outer "frames" are ATYCLB and SOE = albums dealing with hope, light, love, grace while dealing with moments of despair, death, and loss.

    The inner "frames" are HTDAAB and SOI = albums wrestling with choosing "faith over fear", as innocence is lost and gives way to experience.

    Which puts NLOTH right in the middle, an album exploring the spiritual life as a pilgrimage of sorts, involving worship, surrender, and yet also uncertainty...

    Not what the band intended probably at all, but it works for me!


    Huh never thought of it like that
  4. I always thought breathe was an awesome opener don’t know why the changed it to return of the stingray guitar and then later EBTTRL
  5. (Sorry for spam but I’m really bored) I always thought no line on the horizons track listing was just totally wrong I think it should have looked like this
    1. Fez being born
    2. Breathe
    3. Get on your boots
    4. Stand up comedy
    5. Magnificent
    6. Unknown caller
    7. I’ll go crazy if I don’t go crazy tonight
    8. No line on the horizon
    9. White as snow
    10. Ceaders of lebanon
    11. Moment of surrender
  6. I've sort of come around on a select few songs from this album over the past little while, and this morning I had sort of a revelation about the album. Stick with me

    Myself and many others tend to paint a lot of this album as "U2 chickening out". Meaning that there are a few songs that really do sound like U2 was going somewhere different (Fez, White as Snow, Cedars of Lebanon, Moment of Surrender) but so much of the album sounds like familiar old U2, or U2 trying to recapture previous success. I'm pretty sure they've even confirmed that they came back from Morocco with a set of songs but eventually said "there's not really enough here for an album", hence our comments.

    Get on Your Boots is clearly trying to be a Vertigo 2, and it's terrible, and it doesn't mesh with those songs I mentioned above whatsoever. That goes for Stand Up Comedy, Magnificent, Crazy Tonight, Breathe, etc. As much as people may like these tunes (not I), it's so obvious to me that they're not coming from the same headspace as those other ones.

    In that set of songs (again, mentioned in the second paragraph) there's such a tonal shift for U2 happening. They're quiet, they're subdued, there's something otherwordly about them, as though you're sitting on an infinite beach thinking about your previous lives.

    So my revelation this morning was this: What if U2 wasn't necessarily "chickening out", but they started planning the 360 tour WHILE making the album? A Pop #2 in a sense. What effect would this have on the album? Well, what songs did they not perform on the 360 tour? Fez, White as Snow, Cedars of Lebanon, etc. Yes they performed Moment of Surrender, but as the closing song, and to me it definitely stuck out from the rest of the set (in a good way). What songs did they perform? All those other ones. The half of the album that sounds like what U2 would play in a stadium show.

    U2 probably started planning this monster stage show while making the album and thought "there's no way we can tour an album like this, this weird, experimental, quiet storytelling album - on THIS stage, with THIS show." So what did they do? They started writing the stadium boppers. Breathe, Boots, Magnificent, Crazy Tonight. Maybe there was a shift about halfway through the making of this new territorial album when U2 said "how are we going to perform this though?" which resulted in the sort of split album that is No Line on the Horizon. It wouldn't surprise me at all. It would also explain why Bono was on record so many times saying "this is an Achtung Baby-level shift for the band". Maybe the album was either still like that at the time of those quotes, or it still sounded like that to him overall, even though it had left that realm.

    Whether I'm right or not, it's still really too bad. In those songs I hear a U2 album that really could've been something completely different. There are sounds and melodies and even instruments in there that U2 had never used before, and it gives such a fresh take on U2. Listen to White as Snow and Cedars of Lebanon again and tell me those sound anything like the rest of U2's catalog. They don't, and they're amazing. Fez-Being Born is the perfect sort of mix between the two. It has that anthemic joyous sound U2 is known for, but some of the chord changes and melodies in there are so fucking weird, not to mention the lyrics really are original and awesome. The album that I imagine would've opened with that song, the song literally about "being born", and it would've been a storytelling album. It would've had the slower, 360 version of Every Breaking Wave (which is infinitely superior to me).

    Not an album that's half stories and half, half-baked Pop/Rock hit attempts.
  7. That's an interesting concept that may have some truth to it, but I'm not sure about this statement:
    it's so obvious to me that they're not coming from the same headspace as those other ones.
    You aren't the only one who has said this about that particular set of songs, and I've always wondered why people are so sure of it. I personally feel like those songs were just as inspired as any of the others on the album. Who's to prevent U2 from pulling from their old influences and past in the midst of experimentation?

    The only thing Boots has in common with Vertigo is that it's one of the faster/harder songs on its respective album. I never have found them to be similar. Stand Up Comedy has, in my opinion, one of Edge's most interesting riffs. They aren't as experimental because they weren't crafted to be. They probably came out of jams or rehearsal tapes.
  8. Originally posted by thefly108:That's an interesting concept that may have some truth to it, but I'm not sure about this statement:
    [..]
    You aren't the only one who has said this about that particular set of songs, and I've always wondered why people are so sure of it. I personally feel like those songs were just as inspired as any of the others on the album. Who's to prevent U2 from pulling from their old influences and past in the midst of experimentation?

    The only thing Boots has in common with Vertigo is that it's one of the faster/harder songs on its respective album. I never have found them to be similar. Stand Up Comedy has, in my opinion, one of Edge's most interesting riffs. They aren't as experimental because they weren't crafted to be. They probably came out of jams or rehearsal tapes.
    I will say this particular passage was interesting on the wiki for the album:

    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.

    This is just kind of a bummer. To me, songs like Winter would've been a great way to "ground" those more experimental tracks, while keeping with the same sort of tonal aesthetic. It's like a U2-ish sound without sounding poppy, about a very serious subject.

    One could read those quotes and take them at face value, but really, it sounds like they just wanted some hits and didn't want to release something akin to Passengers with a little more of a structured feel.
  9. Since the recent tour finished I’ve been listening to the live versions of some of the tracks from this album and really enjoying them. NLOTH, Magnificent, Moment Of Surrender, Unknown Caller and Breathe, all really good songs. Although I do prefer the album version of unknown caller so I’ve been listening to that too. Even though it’s one of my least favourite albums there’s plenty of really good songs on the album still and nice to listen to for a change. I really like Edge’s solo’s and NLOTH for some reason makes me think of a poor mans The Fly, the latter being a great song as opposed to very good. I’m just digging a lot of these songs.
  10. There must be better mixes of all the songs !
  11. can we say that this album have a great hit who could enter into other best hits compilation?

    magnificent is the only song that have potential IMO (does not mean that it's my favorite).
  12. Pretty sure MOS and Magnificent are the only two to have been referenced at all since 09, so either of those.

    I doubt we will see another "decade" U2 compilation, and instead a "career-spanning" one including songs from NLOTH just to cover the base.