Wednesday, March 04, 2009

No Line on the Horizon

So U2's new album (do we even say "album" anymore?) is out. I'm finally listening to it for the first time, just letting ITunes pick the running order. I don't know how ITunes does this-when I try to listen to a comedy album, which needs a sequence, ITunes just can't seem to handle that idea. Plus I'm not sure the concept of a running order makes any sense these days.

Remember running order? Originally, of course, albums had literal sides-they were big hunks of black vinyl that you literally had to flip over to listen to the other side of. Like Led Zeppelin IV-Black Dog, then Rock N Roll, then Battle of Evermore, then Stairway to Heaven, and then the mighty thump, track one side two, of Misty Mountain Hop. I can't remember the rest off the top of my head. But there was a texture to an album, to the journey it took you on.

So far, the U2 album is fine-I'm not over the moon about it, but I think the single ("Get On Your Boots") is better than some reviews are saying. It's hard to judge, this being literally my first listen. But I like it.

IGN published a ranking of U2 albums (http://music.ign.com/articles/958/958918p3.html) which was fair, but it underrated an album that is far and away my favorite, Rattle and Hum.

5 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. IMO, Nothing will ever be as great as "With Or Without You"... but Get On Your Boots is OK.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I see that Amazon has this album for sale for $3.99, and it is standard MP3 files.

    I have not looked at Itunes lately. Do they still insist on those nonstandard flac files, or have they gone to MP3 yet?

    ReplyDelete
  4. They now offer "ITunes Plus"-no DRM files for $1.29, for some artists.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi there :) Thanks for you comment on my blog; I cannot wait to check out Grammar Girl.

    I don't know if you're into Chuck Klosterman, but he published a pretty good interview with Bono et al. in his book IV (the interview with Val Kilmer was pretty amusing as well). I'm not a huge U2 fan myself, but I just thought I would throw it out there...

    Cris
    http://www.alittleunlikely.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete

I apologize for making you sign in, but I'm trying to cut down on spam.