Have U2 lost their edge?
RUSH JOB: THE LEGENDARY BAND’S LATEST SINGLE FEELS LIKE A CAREER-ENDING SWANSONG
Tip of the hat to the rockers, but Las Vegas stint hits a flat note.
U2 has been one of my favourites, if not the absolute top of my personal hit parade for decades. Last week again, The Joshua Tree was the frontrunner on a playlist of classics with unforgettable, impactful and musically daring tracks like With or Without You, Where the Streets Have No Name and Red Hill Mining Town, among others.
Then Instagram started plastering U2 wall to wall. It was the launch of the Sphere, the brandnew, state-of-the-art concert venue in Las Vegas.
Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton and a stand-in drummer for Larry Mullen Jr were the inaugural act. And the visuals looked spectacular; Bono, on stage at his very best.
No other band, with U2’s history of high-calibre audiovisual assaults on the senses, would have pulled it off quite so powerfully.
But there was a massive downer. It’s the band’s new track, Atomic City. Dedicated to their fans, they said. But frankly, on first, second, third and fourth listens, it feels as if the band should have spent far more time in the studio, crafting a piece of music worthy of the U2 brand and legacy. Atomic City is not that track. In fact, it’s a soundalike of a bunch of older tracks that has been assembled to resemble a new piece of music. There’s just nothing new here.
U2 is capable of so much more. Every album released during the band’s three-decade long and counting career had an edge, a musical and creative momentum.
Their music forged ahead, tagging along with-it trends, new legions of fans and an unmistakable trademark sound.
It was not a rehash of yesterday’s melody-making and lyrically the tracks had substance. Atomic City just does not get there. This has happened before albeit rarely.
A few years ago, the band released a track for World Aids Day called Invisible. Again, nothing standout about it, but at least it had a purpose.
Invisible ushered in a new era in U2’s music, the Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience collective. It served as a transitionary musical interlude to yet another surge ahead in the growth of the band.
Sweetest Thing, a B-side released many years ago that first flopped and then dropped again,successfully, was another instance where U2’s one-offs still had guts and artistic prowess.
Atomic City feels like an endof-career swansong, a track that doesn’t try very hard to be anything more than a rush job.
It probably wasn’t, but there’s no depth or nuance to the song that ultimately feels like a watered-down version of City of Blinding Lights off How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, released in the early noughties.
Then there’s The Rolling Stones whose new single, Angry, counts as among one of the best tracks recorded by the band in decades, rock and roll by octogenarians.
Close your eyes and Jagger does not sound like a grandpa, Keith Richards’ guitar licks like it did four decades ago. The music’s hot, it’s fresh, yet unmistakably Rolling Stones.
The difference, and this is pure speculation, could be that The Stones did not craft music aimed at launching a commercial project like The Sphere.
It forms part of an album, a collection of tracks that tells a story, holds a narrative. Just like what U2’s albums achieved.
The risk of one-off singles that could be misconstrued, or possibly rightly identified as bubblegum rock ’n roll, is exactly that.
Why would a band, a collective of musical and lyrical genius, relegate themselves to a lower rank after clawing their way to the top for years?
It must be one of life’s greatest unanswered questions.