Spin Magazine's Review. As one media outlet or another undoubtedly has yelled at you by now, on Tuesday U2 and Apple confirmed that 2014 will go down as a year of more innovation in music distribution than in music making.
They've conspired to surprise-"gift" the 38-year-old Irish band's new album Songs of Innocence unto a half-billion iTunes subscribers, whether we want it or not. I bet next month Taylor Swift will announce that her album 1989 will simply be found under everybody's pillows one morning, in partnership with the iTooth Fairy. So there Songs of Innocence hangs, eager to be plucked, a fruit so unforbidden as to be practically mandatory. Will it stave off the medics, poison the patient, or be crawling with worms? Let me first admit that, of the many schools of thought on U2, I belong mostly to the crabbiest, seduced by the early-'80s post-punk romanticism but then put off permanently by the spreading gigantism and messianic grandeur.
And yet. Rolling Stone Review. No other rock band does rebirth like U2.
No other band – certainly of U2's duration, commercial success and creative achievement – believes it needs rebirth more and so often. But even by the standards of transformation on 1987's The Joshua Tree and 1991's Achtung! Baby, Songs of Innocence – U2's first studio album in five years – is a triumph of dynamic, focused renaissance: 11 tracks of straightforward rapture about the life-saving joys of music, drawing on U2's long palette of influences and investigations of post-punk rock, industrial electronics and contemporary dance music.
"You and I are rock & roll," Bono shouts in "Volcano," a song about imminent eruption, through a propulsive delirium of throaty, striding bass, alien-choral effects and the Edge's rusted-treble jolts of Gang of Four-vintage guitar. Bono also sings this, earlier in a darker, more challenging tone: "Do you live here or is this a vacation? " Pitchfork's Review. NME's Review. The Irish titans take a serious mis-step that might win a week's worth of good publicity, but could foreshadow a year's worth of bad 4 / 10 U2's last album, 2009's 'No Line On The Horizon' might have been a flawed midlife crisis of a record but, like an actual midlife crisis, it contained some brilliantly fun flashes.
Its follow-up, unfortunately, has only a handful of standouts. 'Iris (Hold Me Close)', about Bono's mother, is by far the best track, a wistful and pining ode that recasts the band's best moments in timeless sonics. Mojo's Review. Given the brouhaha surrounding its means of delivery, as per Radiohead’s In Rainbows, it may be some time before people get around to properly absorbing Songs Of Innocence.
But as the online carpers carped and the devotees thrilled, another truth began to reveal itself: love them or hate them – and in spite of, for the foursome, its teeth-grindingly frustrating gestation – this is the most startlingly fresh, energetic and cohesive U2 album in years. Possibly even because they kept starting it again from scratch and it’s hot off the press.
That William Blake-lifting title offers another truth. Loosely a concept album, it’s rooted in autobiography and their most lyrically candid yet. In the light of the global machine they’ve become, it’s easy to forget how tough and unlikely the rise of U2 actually was. It’s the latter that informs the dark, throbbing anger of Raised By Wolves. “This is the most startlingly fresh, energetic and cohesive U2 album in years.” The Guardian's Review. There are “oh-oh-ohs” that will sound huge ringing out across stadiums the world over when the band inevitably tour next year, some crunching guitar and then Bono starts singing: “I was chasing down the days of fears, chasing down a dream before it disappeared.”
It sounds as if U2 feel comfortable in their skin as their 13th studio album kicks into life with a track called The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone), even if the record’s gestation has been fraught. The Irish band’s last album, No Line on the Horizon, was released over five years ago, and while it received a five star review from Rolling Stone magazine, there was no string of hit singles. To some, the tentativeness to their approach was suggestive of the spiritual yearning that has characterised the best of their work, even while polarising others; to some, it simply sounded as if the band were beginning to lose their mojo.
Only that song gets the breathy backing vocals and cinematic treatment that really bear Danger Mouse’s stamp. Stereo Gum's Review.