Now that I've officially reached the point where I've spun the CD-R enough times that I've lost count, I'm ready to give my high-level thoughts on the album.
A) As someone who finds ALL THAT YOU CAN'T LEAVE BEHIND to be highly overrated by fans (I love all things U2, but ATYCLB is near the bottom for me, personally; it suffers from a surplus of "losing steam" songs) and HOW TO DISMANTLE AN ATOMIC BOMB highly underrated (it's my third favorite of the group's, behind THE JOSHUA TREE and ACHTUNG BABY), I can't quite rank SONGS OF INNOCENCE at the HTDAAB level, but it's not too far under, and it handily bests NO LINE ON THE HORIZON, ATYCLB and POP in the band's recent history. It's probably equal to ZOOROPA in that it features not a single fair or poor song, just a laudable range of good-to-great ones.
B) My favorite tracks are:
1. "Every Breaking Wave" -- I've seen some complaints that this song comes off like "With or Without You"-lite, which is a fair criticism, but that doesn't stop it from still being a devastatingly beautiful, achingly emotional track. If you're a step below "With or Without You", you're still light years beyond the treacle most bands produce in their slower, softer works. I do find it ironic, though, that, due to the fact that it's dying so blatantly in terms of radio airplay, I've been desperate for so long for U2 to bring some good, authentic, fist-pumping, chest-thumping, foot-stomping rock-and-roll back to the fore only for my favorite track to end up being "a chick song"!
2. "This is Where You Can Reach Me Now" -- This one really seems to have fans divided, but I absolutely relish this track. Has U2 created a song this funky and swanky since "Mysterious Ways"? I think not! I always feel that one of the band members seems to "own" each album, their talents coming to the foreground and providing a type of sonic signature to the album. NO LINE ON THE HORIZON featured Bono's strongest, clearest, most striking vocals in many years; THE JOSHUA TREE is an hour-long experience brimming with some of the most confident and trademark guitar work Edge has ever created; Larry has never put his stamp on an album as fiercely as he does in WAR--from the opening beats, you know he'll be leading the band's charge throughout. I say all this to opine that SONGS OF INNOCENCE is very possibly Adam Clayton's finest hour. He charges through the album like a runaway train, taking no prisoners, and "This is Where You Can Reach Me Know" highlights his prowess, offering up such a fantastic backing rhythm, I can't help but shake my butt in a way I've, frankly, never associated with U2 before. This song is sexy, fun, and deliciously off the wall.
3. "Volcano" -- Oh my God. This track is everything U2 wanted "Get On Your Boots" (which I like!) to be but came up short. If this isn't chosen as a single (though, let me be clear, "Every Breaking Wave" needs to be the very next choice), all four band members need a good slap upside the head. Every time I hear this track, I'm waylaid by the unshakable confidence all four members bring to it. This song sounds like the culmination of a band that has, for once, achieved 100% of what they set out to accomplish when the first notes of it were born. I howl this one on the way to and from work like it's the last song I'll ever sing.
My least favorites are "Song for Someone", which is rather lovely, and it is growing on me, but it never seems to fully take flight in the way U2's best slower tracks do (and which "EBW" certainly does), and the track which every other U2 fan on the planet seems to think is one of the album's best--"The Troubles". Now, mind you, most of "The Troubles" is a fine piece of work, anchored by a moving melody and Bono's open-hearted vocals. The trouble (no pun intended) for me (and it's a big one, knocking my appreciation of the overall track down more that a notch or two) are the vocals by Lykke Li. I'm sorry, but I'm just not a fan of them at all. At first, I thought I was just having a knee-jerk negative reaction to the fact that a female voice had worked it's way into the sound of a band that's almost universally presented itself as four working-class-upbringing, calloused-fingered men, but upon further reflection, I realized that can't be it. I was never too bothered with the female background vocalists that have infrequently appeared in U2 tracks (notably, in a song like "Red Light") and I actually cherish the powerhouse contributions of Dorothy Terrell on RATTLE AND HUM's live performance of "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and Sinead O'Connor in "I'm Not Your Baby". It's just that I'm rather repelled by Lykke Li's hesitant, ethereal, fey vocals, especially on the heels of ten such commanding, confident, "you can take the mantle of World's Greatest Rock and Roll Band from our cold dead hands" tracks. I find myself thinking back to the female vocalists I love and it's names like Stevie Nicks, Chrissie Hynde, Courtney Love, Sinead O'Connor, Annie Lennox, Pat Benatar, Joan Jett and Siouxsie Sioux that are ones who came to mind, so I guess I just prefer a tougher, grittier, more raw style when it comes to the sound of women vocalists. Lyyke Li's tentative, sleepy stylings come off like a less secure Lorde to me and don't mesh well at all with the power of Bono's. I've seen word that one of the bonus tracks pending on the physical release of SONGS OF INNOCENCE is an "alternate mix" of "The Troubles"; I have my fingers and toes crossed that, musically, it's near identical to what we already have, but eschews Lykke Li altogether in favor of Bono singing the entire track solo. If that's what we mercifully end up with, the current album version will quickly become one of my least played U2 tracks ever. Whoever it was on the production team whose creative thinking brought Lykke Li into the fold goes home without any ice cream.
In closing, I would say that I've lived in no small amount of fear and trepidation of this new album. Five years of incessant tinkering, with more producing "cooks in the kitchen" than the band has ever used before, should have completely neutered the finished album into a milquetoast blend of every least challenging idea. Instead, impossibly, it resulted in the most sure-handed, consistent album they've released in over 20 years. I don't know how U2 continues to pull off magic like this, especially in their fourth decade, but I guess it all comes down to the words of Bob Waugh, PD of adult alternative WRNR Baltimore: "Once a name, always a threat. Until proven otherwise, U2 is still U2."
