Songs of Innocence

They want to be everything to everyone and, in attempting to do so, they've wound up with a record that appeals to a narrow audience: fellow travelers who either thrill at the spectacle or dig for the subtleties buried underneath the digital din.

Where the singer's awkward earnestness yielded rock & roll poetry through the band's storied odyssey--Emerald Isle exodus (Boy) full circle to paterfamilias (All That You Can't Leave Behind)--his world leader pretend profile here matches Horizon by yielding only self-conscious gobbledygook.

Songs of Innocence is a colossal-sounding record from rock's ultimate stadium wreckers, and a quick listen reveals why no other marketing strategy would have worked.

Yes, it’s big and shiny and sometimes bombastic, but it also takes chances and pushes forward the band’s legacy.

Songs of Innocence comes off as flat and strangely complacent, even as it pays lip service to youthful inspiration, notably the punk and post-punk of the late '70s.

Songs Of Innocence is stricken with lethargy, with a level of aspiration that extends as far as Coldplay and never explores further. [Nov 2014, p.93]

It’s a mixed bag, but an overall pleasant and inoffensive one.

Perhaps it’s the poor choice of producer in Danger Mouse, perhaps it’s the band losing their nerve, but the whole thing feels bound by a laboured tastefulness.

If U2 was ever cool or exciting, that spark has been absent for a good 20 years, and with Songs of Innocence, they've never sounded so ordinary or cloying.

Don't expect a record as breathtaking as U2 at its best. Rather, this is average-grade stuff with a couple essential songs.

The result is their best and most thematically complete album since Achtung Baby. By turning towards their past, U2 have found their way back to the future. [Nov 2014, p.88]

It is impeccably produced and sheened, but it sounds polished to the extent of being soulless.

[Songs Of Innocence] has only a handful of standouts.... This is a serious mis-step that might win a week's worth of good publicity, but could foreshadow a year's worth of bad.

It's an album where the rich embroidery overshadows the essential garment. Details impress but the overall picture never quite comes together.

Once the controls for the album are ceded (mostly) to Danger Mouse, the album really starts to cook. The last five songs are the best batch of material U2 have played a part in for a decade, at least.

Bono may have self-deprecatingly described Songs of Innocence as “the blood, sweat and tears of some Irish guys...in your junk mail,” but it’s not even that interesting--it’s just a blank message.

A majority of Songs of Innocence shows the band fumbling around with current chart trends, settling for melodies and lyrics that are simply “good enough,” and generally making moves that reek of desperation instead of confidence, a stance that is very ill-fitting of U2.

This is no disaster, nor is it a masterpiece. Songs of Innocence is a competent U2 album, always a good thing.

Some veteran rock stars write a memoir in order to make sense of their origins; Bono has chosen to sing one. From this autobiographical precision all the album's strengths flow. [Nov 2014, p.100]

U2's first studio album in five years--is a triumph of dynamic, focused renaissance.

From the nails-on-a-chalkboard solo of "Sleep Like a Baby Tonight" to the whining guitar strains of "Every Breaking Wave," the Edge's melodies and atmospheric licks are the real star of the album, which is otherwise marred by the kind of slick MOR pablum that plagued the band's last few efforts.

Instead of a triumphant return to form, then, Innocence is more of a satisfying side conversation, a familiar face coming round to the back door and whiling the time away nicely till dark or dawn

The fact remains that Songs of Innocence ultimately feels like a crucial upswing in U2’s discography, especially since it comes at such a late stage in their careers.

Things get more interesting in the album’s second half, when U2 ditch the tasteful anthems in favor of bolder influences and outré detours.

As a free sample, it’s fine: it has its moments among the longeurs, enough of them to suggest U2 aren’t a spent force. But what Songs of Innocence isn’t is the grand return the band obviously crave.

Despite the involvement of producer Danger Mouse, the more experimental leanings of albums like Achtung Baby and Zooropa have been abandoned in favour of the all-too-familiar blend of vaunting, declamatory vocals and juddering guitar riffs; but sadly, that knack for irresistible pop hooks with which Danger Mouse helped hoist The Black Keys to superstar status is almost entirely absent here, restricted to just an occasional keyboard counter-melody like that on "California (There Is No End To Love)".

The album is a blast of discoveries, hopes, losses, fears and newfound resolve in lyrics that are openly autobiographical. It’s also a blast of unapologetic arena rock and cathedral-scale production, equally gigantic and detailed, in the music that carries them.

While Songs of Innocence is more succinct, glossy and nimble than recent U2 outings, there is very little of the rawness, directness or spontaneity of youth to it--and precious little innocence.

At times it does sound like it is trying a bit too hard to please. But it's more pop than Pop ever was, and it certainly does the job it apparently sets out to do, delivering addictive pop rock with hooks, energy, substance and ideas that linger in the mind after you’ve heard them.

Things get increasingly glum and disenchanted as the album grinds towards the cop-out of "The Troubles." [Dec 2014, p.81]