Songs of Innocencerelease date: Sep. 9, 2014
format: digital (11 x File, FLAC)
[album rate: 3 / 5] [3,12]
producer: Danger Mouse with others
label: Universal-Island Records - nationality: Ireland
Track highlights: 1. "The Miracle (Of Joey Ramone)" - 2. "Every Breaking Wave" - 5. "Iris (Hold Me Close)" - 7. "Raised by Wolves" - 11. "The Troubles" (feat. Lykke Li)
13th studio album by U2 follows 5½ years after No Line on the Horizon (Mar. 2009) sees a change in producer-credits. Preceeding the album, U2 released the (non-album) single "Invisible" (Feb 2014) produced by American artist Danger Mouse (aka Brian Joseph Burton), who was initially hired as producer on this, and they actually already had recorded the new album back in 2010. Danger Mouse is credited as co-producer on the majority of the tracks (7 out of 11, and is only producer on two), but he mostly shares the credit with others, as the band alledgedly wasn't satisfied with the recordings, and subsequently presented the recordings to various others to add details to the outcome, which explains the relative long time span between their 2009 album and this one. The finished album sees British producer Paul Epworth as co-producer on 4 tracks and additional producer on one, American musician Ryan Tedder as co-producer on 4 tracks, sound engineer Declan Gaffney is credited as co-producer on 3 tracks and as additional producer on two, and Flood (aka Mark Ellis) is co-producer on one song. To some controversy U2 sold the album to Apple, who made it 'free' with the launch of a new iPhöne model or a Watch, as well as for all (paying) customers on its iTunes platform.
Musically, the album appears as a 'return to rock' - although, the band has done this on multiple occasions since their first 'return' with All That You Can't Leave Behind (Oct. 2000) - something they sought to establish with the succeeding two, or three including this.
U2 sounds exactly like you would expect them to. Sometimes they tend to sound like other bands aiming to follow a bit too closely in their footsteps, or, they sound like a band without much new under the horizon, except from procaliming "Heey, stadium lovers, we're still here!!". Yes, admittedly, this is a new collection of songs, but beware, 'cause you already know what you get. I guess, they have reached the point most other artists have to deal with at some (late) stage in a long career, asking themselves: 'Are we still relevant?' And questioning if it's Okay just to stick to some kind of reproduction.
This new album is practically like watching a train fixated at a station. You may ask yourself: is this about to leave, any soon now? Has it just arrived?, or: Is this its final stop?! It's like time itself has stopped 'cause nothing really seems to be in a process - this is but a nicely produced distilation.
Not recommended.
