The world stopped long enough for us to get on it. My best friend Guggi had a ticket and he snuck us through a side exit he pried open. 'The 4 members of U2 went to see the Ramones playing in the state cinema in Dublin without thinking about how we were going to get in.
As Bono sings in the lead song, 'The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)', 'I woke up when the miracle occurred/ Heard a song that made some sense out of the world.'Įxploring themes of home and family, relationships and discovery, detailed liner notes fill out the picture with resonant stories, like one of the first gigs the teenage band got into. The eleven tracks on Songs Of Innocence, a kind of musical autobiography, chart U2's earliest influences from 70s rock and punk to early 80s electronica and soul. If you know the album, added Bono, you'll see the themes in the visual language, how 'holding on to your own innocence is a lot harder than holding on to someone else's.'
The shoot with Larry and his son was initially an experiment but everyone loved it as a visual metaphor for the record. The idea of the unique relationship between a parent and child, the image of a father and son, came from the band. With this record we were looking for the raw, naked and personal, to strip everything back.' 'Songs Of Innocence is the most intimate album we've ever made. 'We've always been about community in U2, about family and friends,' explained Bono. Both featured the face of a child, Peter Rowen, the younger brother of Guggi, Bono's childhood friend growing up on Cedarwood Road. The image resonated with the band's iconic 1980 debut album Boy and, three years later, the War album. The striking cover art of the physical releases, a photo by Glen Luchford, features Larry Mullen Jr protecting his 18 year old son.
#U2 songs of innocence free
On tunes about Irish paramilitary car bombings (“Raised by Wolves”), youthful anger (the sludgy, bass-driven standout “Volcano”) and the hopeful dreams of common men (“Sleep Like a Baby Tonight”), the group tweaks the sound of its last three albums just enough to prove its been paying attention, and to up the ante for the next crop of imitators.The first studio album from the band since 2009, Songs Of Innocence was released on CD & Vinyl on October 13th 2014, just over a month after the groundbreaking digital release when Apple delivered the album free to more than half a billion people with iTunes accounts. Here, the Edge’s signature ’80s-era refracted-light riffage, not to mention bass and piano accents reminiscent of 1983’s “New Year’s Day,” are good fits for lines like, “Hold me close and don’t let me go” - pleas Bono delivers with taste and restraint.Įlsewhere, U2 serves up tastefully restrained rocking of a more modern variety. The closest U2 comes to marrying throwback sounds with sentimental lyrics is “Iris (Hold Me Close),” written for Bono’s mother, who died when the singer was 14. “Cedarwood Road” - another Bells-y cut whose falsetto backing vocals might as well belong to that duo’s singer, James Mercer - is all about the Dublin street where Bono grew up. “California (There Is No End to Love),” a more blustery version of the synthed-out rock that producer Brian “ Danger Mouse” Burton makes with his side project Broken Bells, deals with the band’s first trip to Los Angeles. Instead, the foursome saves the nostalgia for the lyrics. Not that anyone who’s been following U2’s trajectory for the last 30 years should have been expecting a return to the pointy post-punk of early albums like Boy (1980) and October (1981).
0 kommentar(er)
