Apples times for U2 on the defensive – Sydsvenskan

There were signs that they made her in the music world, Apple and Bono. Apple’s music player, iTunes had admittedly half a billion registered users, but a disturbingly large percentage of them had long since gone over to Spotify and other streaming services.

Brother Bono’s band U2 had only slightly fewer listeners, but the songs that played was rarely newer than 2004 “Vertigo”. U2 began to approach a state where only the superstitious have fear of heights.

So it’s a stroke of genius to make common cause. On Tuesday evening released suddenly U2′s new creation, like a free album, exclusive to the 500 million iTunes users. Other fans who do not acquire an iTunes account (and who does not remember how to spell Youtube) must wait until 14 October, when the plate is released to other channels and in physical form.

The new album, created in collaboration with a disparate bunch of producers (Paul Epworth, Danger Mouse, Flood), has been a hot talking small talk for long, but that it would be made public at this time came as a total surprise. Shock launch recalls how Beyoncé and David Bowie acted, and gives U2 a rewarding position: no one has expected a Magnum Opus, in September, so maybe we are content with what little we get.

This is, for U2, unassuming album, although the songs reflect on childhood and important formative events (“The Troubles” in Ireland; mother’s death during Bono’s teenage; experience of that first heard The Ramones and other initial rites) invites to big words and gestures. Bono stands up to the temptation to norpa title from William Blake’s poetry collection “Songs of Innocence And of Experience” in its entirety, even though he actually has coverage for it; youth depictions have gone through an experienced man sometimes merciless filters. Nostalgic is not.

The music is as free from pretensions – it is immediately defensive, both related to the band sounds that characterized their early years, when their aid producers are working to reflect what is heard on arenas today.

A handful of songs are okay. The band typically slender “Every Breaking Wave”. The ballad “Song For Someone” to a solo that links Big Country with The Killers. The almost epic “Cedar Wood Road.”

But there is only one real keeper: the suggestive “The Troubles”, a duet with Lykke Li, where Bono not only lets his elastic voice to space but also captures the expression in the title and make it strictly personal.