U2
Songs of Innocence

It's difficult to review an album like this.

The first to have reached 500 million potential users and listeners in a few hours, and therefore the first to have literally sparked so quickly millions of different opinions and reviews that, as far as I can trace on the Internet, are equally divided between labeling it a masterpiece or a marketing disaster.

No doubt: I too found myself torn between the dismay generated by the first listen and the fact that U2 decided to release such a bad album and the subsequent desire to give it some hope with more attentive and repeated listens. After all, writing a review in the heat of enthusiasm or disgust always generates a lot of instinct but little objectivity.

Let's start with the single: “The miracle (of Joey Ramone)” does its job with distortions, choirs, and melodic openings typical of U2, it is well produced with a meticulous choice of sounds so cool and modern and I'm sure it will lend itself to opening the future concerts of the four Irishmen with its impactful force. “Every Breaking Wave” shows that few chords but good ideas make beautiful songs even if they seem to remind you of many others (“With or Without You” above all), and the fact that it appears equally beautiful even in the acoustic version recently played in some television shows only confirms its value.

“California”: I did not appreciate it, some good ideas wasted in a song that never develops and actually demonstrates Bono's voice fragility, layered and doubled but unable to hide flaws and the ravages of time. “Song for someone” and “Iris” revisit Bono's intimate side, well accompanied by The Edge in some effective riffs and stadium ballads, but for this reason, they fail to hide a certain lack of inspiration.

Better “Raised By Wolves” and “Cedarwood Road”, well-calibrated in dynamics and above all “real” in terms of writing and execution. “Volcano” to me is a disaster, a negligible pop rock, impersonal with sounds too trendy reminiscent of hundreds of other negligible songs broadcast daily on the radio. Better “This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now” and “The Troubles” (featuring Lykke Li) good songs but they give me more the feeling of representing filler for the album.

However, to redeem a certain tendency of the album towards the negligible and mediocre, emerges the unexpected gem: “Sleep Like A Baby Tonight”. With this song, I return to listen to early '90s atmospheres when U2 were experimenting with new paths, risking getting lost but emerging with that milestone that was “Achtung Baby.” The final solo by The Edge is worth the album: suffering, visceral and vaguely reminiscent of “Love is Blindness” but true, passionate and proof that the four Dubliners are sometimes still there with heart before head, with instruments before money.

“Songs of Innocence” therefore deserves to be listened to but it's up to us to understand what to expect from U2. If the desire is to hear them again with the atmosphere of their '80s-early '90s productions, it's mere utopia (moreover, U2 themselves have already tried to replicate themselves with the “minor” albums of this millennium). If instead, we are interested in knowing them through new and different facets, “Songs of Innocence” is a flawed and incomplete album but precisely for this reason interesting.