Not interested myself, but am sure many here will be at that price – would imagine the offer won’t last long so get your skates on
Full details are available at Am France and SDE
Might it not be a good idea to create a dedicated “Bargain alert post for CDs and vinyl (could bung in books, DVDs and streaming offers, too) a la the consolidated Obituaries post the mods set up last year?
See also this, which started out as a FB group and is now a grown-up website.
https://rewarddeals.co.uk/?search=Vinyl%20Record%20Lows&type=Latest
Cheers, Steve, bookmarked – some nifty bargains up there – a 2 LP into to Syd B at £24 is pretty damn good
I look every day, much to the Financial Controller’s dismay. I’ll be needing a trip to Ikea for more Kallax soon.
No-hits Clash 3LP People’s Hall set on there for £24 today.
Back to the U2s, what do folk think of it so far?
Arsenal!
High praise indeed.
As (perhaps) the biggest U2 fan on the site, even I’m pretty baffled. I can’t really equate Edge’s lowkey ‘had time off during lockdown so had a bit of a Tinker with the old stuff’ approach with the fact that it’s 40 songs long (!!) with a million vinyl variants, an Apple Music interview, a David Letterman 90 minute doco (actually very good), the tea towel, the marbles…
Also, as far as I can tell, three of the four headshots (I read somewhere each member chose their own faves) on the cover, are from Pop, the album they are all on record as trashing. (Unnecessarily IMO).
All of it, along with Larry not playing the upcoming Vegas shows, show a real lack of cohesion which, under Paul McGuinness’ guidance, would never have flown.
Rather than the ‘unplugged’ old material, they could have taken a reflective and thoughtful approach to new material and started acting their age rather than making oafs of themselves with ‘current’ poptastic producers and daft publicity stunts. As a band I grew up with, how nice if they’d act their age and write songs that speak more intimately to fans in their 50s rather than trying to pick up new 16 year olds.
Also, all the stuff Edge has purported to ‘update’ and replace is all the stuff that makes them special! Impressionistic lyrics, a keening questing emotionalism, uplift, doubt, reaching beyond one’s grasp. These qualities are all over all of their work up until Achtung Baby.
It’s a resounding ‘meh’ from me. Sadly.
Cleft stick time for U2. The 16-year-olds aren’t going to be listening to the likes of them and the over-50s just don’t spend enough these days.
I think their bolt is now shot and some downsizing is in order.
I think you’re onto something with the “act your age” thing. Give us a proper old man album where they drop their guard and get a bit more personal.
They’re an odd group in that, to me at least, they never really felt “young”. By the time I was listening to music in earnest, Achtung Baby had been and gone, so Zooropa was my first proper encounter with them, and they felt weirdly middle aged at that point, even though they were only in their early 30s.
I could be totally off base, but they never struck me as a particularly wild, or carefree. Rather, there was always something a bit studied and furrow-browed about them. Maybe it’s because after Achtung they went after that whole rock star artifice, but it always felt like they were more perspiration than inspiration, and all a little bit safe. The living embodiment of Q magazine.
I wouldn’t consider myself a fan personally, but I do think they get more stick than is their due (let’s be honest: it’s Bono and his whole persona that’s the issue really, rather than the music), and they’ve definitely made some lovely tunes, most of them on the Joshua Tree/Rattle & Hum, but the odd gem later on too.
I think it would be fun to watch them drop the “we’re rock stars us” facade and do something stripped down and earthy. They know their way around a tune, and no one cares that some of them go on holiday with Barack Obama or have the Pope on speed dial or whatever other nonsense the singer is up to – tell us something real. Move out of middle age and into your dotage – no sunglasses, celeb mates, air punching anthems or any of that stuff. Don’t jam it onto our phones or shove it on an Apple ad. I’d be up for giving it a listen.
And take that bloody hat off, Mr Hedge. We all know you’re bald.
I got the download and have listening to it a couple of times. I don’t dislike it and it’s a pleasant enough listen, but it really doesn’t do much. There are probably only a couple of tracks that benefit from the “reworking”, the rest just kind of wash over me. I can’t see it being on long term rotation.
That said, I thought the Tiny Desk concert and the BBC Piano room slots they did were very good – maybe these reworkings benefit from actually seeing them being performed live.
Oh, and they did Abba on the BBC Piano room, which gives them a couple of bonus points….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLbexDnt_a8
I think Dave Hepworth on the latest WIYE pod sums it up perfectly. To summarise his more eloquent commentary – they’ve tried to bring gravitas and deep meaning to some perfectly fine songs by making them slower and using acoustic guitars (The Edge??) piano and strings . In short they’ve made them dull!
I took a listen myself and totally agree.
The Rick Rubin/Johnny Cash collaborations managed to make this format work but Bono you ain’t no Johnny Cash.
The fact that it was still selling for E20 a couple of hours ago would seem to indicate that AWers aren’t the only ones who find this an underwhelming potential purchase
Can anyone name one band who has been improved by ‘going acoustic’? (solo singer/songwriters is a different kettle of fish).
The Nirvana MTV live is pretty revelatory, but would anyone take over their actual studio albums. No of course not. Unless you don’t like Nirvana because they’re too loud.
It feels to me a solution to the age-old lack of creative juices and no songs for a new album.
I like Jeff Tweedy’s Together Through Life, but that’s probably more going back to how they sounded originally before he worked them out with the band and he was still writing lots of new songs at the same time
* Don’t prefer them though
How about Chumbawamba? Much as I like their agit-punk-dance iteration I prefer the folk band they, or half of em became.
I love Together at Last as much as any Wilco album.
I also agonise over whether the one time I saw JT solo was better than any of the times I’ve seen Wilco.
Solo live is also kind of a stand up routine, almost as good as Wilco for me. Glad we have both. And I also love his last 3 solo albums (with other musicians, namely most of his family)
My hi-fi shop pal introduced me to Acoustic Album No. 8, a stipped back version of Album No. 8, by Womble-adjacent Katie Melua.
Voices in the Night in studio form sounds like a rip-off of Be Thankful For What You Got but, in acoustic guitar and piano form, is rather lovely.
Would have been more fun if the boys had done it in the style of an Irish show band from the 50s and 60s, bought some sparkly suits and gone out on a secret tour of grotty little dancehalls
Or gone full ‘O’Donnell’ with lemon yellow pullovers and a nice Lady Di flick, as their audience ‘matures’
Or invested in a wardrobe of Pringles jumpers, some rocking chairs and gone full on
Val Bonocan – They could even drape some used cars from Rafferty’s Motors
of Roscommon around the venue for added versimilitude
Pringle’s jumpers – now there’s something I have not heard since I was a teenager (which is more than a few years ago). Always associated with middle age men (I.e most of the AW) who played golf at the weekend.
Do they still exist ? Does anyone admit to owning one ?
In the Aberfoyle Scottish Wool Mill outlet, they have a large ish James Pringle concession. Loads of v neck jumpers. Vile.
(Me and Mrs P are in the Trossachs)
U2 backing Eoin McLove?
Chelllooo-oooh!
I’m there.
A sweater you can eat?
The guy’s a legend.
I have a vague memory of Pringle v-necks being worn by youngish chaps, up for a bit of violence after football matches…maybe 40 or so years ago? And Mark E Smith, come to think of it…
I like U2 – not everything they’ve done, but an awful lot of it, so I was looking forward to this. Bloody hell, it’s fairly dreadful – it mostly sounds like that disc of demos that you play once and never again. There are some great songs here that have been murdered (suicided..?) – didn’t someone have the balls to say ‘hang on lads, this ain’t really working.’..?