There’s snow! Or so I’m told. Do you really think I’m the type of guy that goes outside to check? But I am! I swear! Well tomorrow evening I’ll be back in London briefly to see R.E.M. and I’m paying out the ass for it (by my familiar club show standards) so I hope it’s good! But I figured how many chances will I get to see this, one of my favourite bands again. I was going to brush-up on my old R.E.M. tunes, but on Saturday, U2′s new album managed to trickle onto the internet. Now, this only happens every so often, so suffice to say I haven’t really been able to listen to much else. I’ve heard the album about 25 times in the last two days, and I can confirm that I like it a great deal.
If anything it is their most direct, accessible release ever. Is that good? Hard to say for sure. But it succeeds in doing everything that All That You Can’t Leave Behind didn’t quite manage. When Bono talked about Beautiful Day as a profound expression of pure joy, he would have been put to shame if he heard Original of the Species. The album is not a return to what the band does best, so much as it is what the band does best. The melodies are tight and elegant and catchy; it’s loud, it’s joyful, it’s triumphant, moving, and it’s uncompromised. It’s not a hugely rocking album, but it is huge, and it’s quite loud. Every note is in its place and it sounds very well constructed, but at the same time it’s more than that the voices and the instruments leap off of the record with vibrancy and vigour. They have a life of their own, and the harmony between the brilliant performances and the transcendence of the songs themselves seem to drive the album into the stratosphere. I think it’s going to be huge, because the power of this album is undeniable.
Yes, I am excited, and potentially overreacting and blinded by my gigantic slobbering fandom, but you know what? It doesn’t matter. Cause I feel Grrrrreat! And it’s all thanks to a little band from the Northside of Dublin called U2. If anything, this experience has cemented the fact that no matter how I manage to look at it, U2 is still unquestionably my favourite band, because a new release by anyone else could definitely not have this lurvely effect on me. I can only hope the album stands up to time and I’m still this in love with it in three weeks, and three months, and three years.
The complete rough draft of my creative writing project is now available for perusal. I invite and encourage such action.
Oh, and remember (of course you don’t) that creative writing essay that I did at the last minute, and researched through 5 books the same night I wrote it? I was summarily rewarded with an A for my efforts (right after being told that the prof was the hardest marker in the English dept, too). School is a strange, strange beast. But at least this time it’s a friendly one.