U2, and big risks in mainstream records

No. 1431: U2 - Zooropa

There once existed a version of U2 that was willing to take some pretty big swings, swings so big that they proved divisive even among longtime fans. Not in the leave-an-album-on-your-iPhone kinda way, but in the fully-embrace-rave-aesthetics way. I’m not sure, in a pure musical sense, that they’ve had a more controversial album than POP, which in hindsight is probably much better than you remember it. (Look past the goofy video for “Discotheque,” etc. and it’s not that far a leap from Achtung Baby.) And I know what you’re thinking, but while their recent albums might have an overall lower reception, they’re not “controversial” in the same way—people more or less know what to expect now, for better or worse.

But Zooropa? Nobody saw this one coming. It’s a weird one. A wild one. After releasing one of the biggest albums of their career, the eight-times-platinum Achtung Baby, they made a strange and experimental record that’s influenced by industrial music and house and techno, whose first single featured lyrics chanted by The Edge instead of Bono, and whose last song featured lead vocals from Johnny Cash. And it sold a couple million copies in spite of itself, a record that seemed to be the end result of a thought experiment: What if we pulled apart the very idea of being U2?

Except the songs are great, and many of them, “Numb” and “The Wanderer” aside, still sound very much like U2! As hazy and otherworldly as the opening title track is, once it bursts into its coda, it’s the sound of U2 at their best. Ditto “Stay (Faraway So Close)” and “Dirty Day.” But the weird grooves are part of the appeal; “Lemon” turns a memorial of sorts to Bono’s late mother into a flashy disco single, “Daddy’s Gonna Pay for Your Crashed Car” ramps up the industrial klang, and “Some Days Are Better Than Others” rides a squelchy but low-key bass loop. Some of it is absurd on paper, but all of it just works. 

I’d be very surprised if they did anything this outside-the-box ever again, as their approach has been fairly conservative for the past couple decades, and you can probably attribute a lot of that to the backlash to POP, which was more a case of their marketing working against them than any real problems with the album. But here we are. With the acquisition of this album, I now have pretty much every U2 album I’ll need, though at some point I might have to get another copy of The Unforgettable Fire because mine has some warps that interrupt “Bad” and “A Sort of Homecoming.” But if they’re ready to try something this wild again? I’m all ears. Rating: 9.2

No. 1432: Emeralds - Does It Look Like I’m Here?

Now here’s an absolute masterpiece of an electronic record. Originally a synths-only duo that expanded to a trio with the addition of guitarist Mark McGuire, Emeralds built up a pretty massive body of work in just a few short years. Most of them are demos and things that aren’t really “official” releases in any meaningful sense, they have titles like Demo No. 1 and Bullshit Boring Drone Band and Christmas Tape 2007. They released some cassettes on Aaron Dilloway’s Hanson label and then eventually around 2008 or so started releasing some music that you might call albums without scare quotes or hesitation. But they were still issuing lots of very limited cassette material as well, so one way or another it was still the product of some mad scientists in their Cleveland laboratory, offering up whatever strange concoction their chemical process would yield.

But Does It Look Like I’m Here? was a turning point. Released with wider-ish distribution through Editions Mego, which also put out records by the likes of Oneohtrix Point Never and Fennesz and other such drone/ambient luminaries, the album showcased the trio’s most fully realized vision to date and, in hindsight, overall. Theoretically I discovered this through the usual channels—they sent us a promo. But really I have to credit my friend Tyler who was always a little more attuned to the avant garde in the late ‘00s and early ‘10s than I was for a variety of reasons. He reviewed it for Treble, and his endorsement was enough to make me dive in. And holy shit. (Side note: there’s a personal essay to be written about how the biggest years of music discovery in my life were 2000, 2010 and 2020, which is an interesting cyclical observation. quietly ponders…)

This is progressive electronic music in the tradition of Berlin school artists like Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, with waves of overlapping arpeggios—real space-out kinda stuff. And all of it sounds cool as hell. But it’s the addition of McGuire’s guitar that lends the album a sense of vulnerability and emotionalism that hits me in a way that, say, OPN’s Rifts couldn’t. (Returnal is a different story.) It’s no hyperbole to call this an important record for me, one I was obsessed with for years, and even finally broke down and bought a vinyl copy from a European Discogs seller before it was (of fucking course!) reissued by Ghostly later that year. Well I suppose it means it’ll be easier to find a replacement, god forbid, should something happen to this one. (Or not: I was looking for vinyl copies of the second album by HTRK, whose catalog has been reissued by Ghostly, and only saw one $1,000 copy in Lithuania… that settled that!) But records like this deserve the extra effort. It’s such a mesmerizing and beautiful thing. Rating: 9.4

No. 1433: Caribou - Up in Flames

Readers close to my age might remember that Dan Snaith originally released this album under the name Manitoba. But due to legal action from The Dictators’ Handsome Dick Manitoba, he had to change his stage name, which is a little odd, given that Manitoba is a Canadian province. But hey, I’m no lawyer.

Of course, Snaith has had a productive and fruitful career as Caribou ever since, as well as his house project Daphni, so maybe it all worked out in the long run. But this is the album that really started to heat up his career. While his first album was more in the vein of Aphex Twin-style IDM, but not as bonkers, this one is full-blown psychedelia, full of kaleidoscopic loops and flutes and pitch-shifting vocals and glockenspiel and lots and lots of big drums. It’s as much Mercury Rev as Four Tet, maybe more so, and it holds up great. I mean, otherwise I wouldn’t have bought it 19 years after its release, right?

I picked this up a couple months after getting Swim, and a year or two later I got Andorra, so I’ve sort of been on a slow course of picking up as much of the Caribou catalog as I can. The one that still eludes me is The Milk of Human Kindness, which I find pretty underrated, and hard to find apparently! There’s a good argument for this one being his best, though, despite the legal rancor it wrought. Rating: 9.1

No. 1434: Horse Lords - Comradely Objects

It’s one thing to be an avant garde group that plays with microtonal scales and minimalist composition and polyrhythmic patterns. It’s another thing entirely to make all of that groove as hard as this band does. On paper, Horse Lords might seem a little more academic than they are in practice, but one listen to Comradely Objects is proof enough of their ability to bring the heat. 

The Baltimore group have a unique sound, one that is constantly changing though invariably sounds like only themselves. It’s hard to even come up with a convincing comparison, in part because each song comprises such atypical parts, like the polyrhythmic math-rock groove of “Zero Degree Machine,” the microtonal highlife of “Mess Mend,” the dissonant improvisation of “Law of Movement,” or the no wave funk of “May Brigade.” 

They’re the sort of band that in theory your friend with a master’s in composition and your dive bar buddies would both like, but in practice that’s probably not true. But Horse Lords have chops regardless, and this record is just all kinds of awesome. Rating: 9.1

No. 1435: Kvelertak - s/t

I’ve been hearing a lot of complaints in the last couple years about how “music discovery is broken,” which if we’re reading between the lines, is more about how technology has made it so much more difficult to break through now, even after it once was an asset to artists. But I also take a slightly different perspective, which is that, as a consumer or listener, if you’re looking for new artists, you can still find them! They’re out there! The guy whose words you’re reading right now? He’s always got suggestions, if you’re looking. 

But even as a listener who’s always looking, always getting music pitched in my direction, and is literally unable to listen to everything in my inbox, I still find great music in unexpected places. Back in the mid-’00s to early ‘10s, I perused a number of now-offline forums that catered to weird obsessives like myself and found stuff I might not have otherwise. In metal circles, Kvelertak took off kind of fast, but at first, it very much seemed like a “Who are these guys and where did they come from?” kind of thing. The answer to the second question is: Norway. But they got some assists from some heavy hitters early on. Their debut album was produced by Converge’s Kurt Ballou and the artwork was illustrated by Baroness’ John Baizley, and those two names alone were enough to get me on board. 

But the album is more than the sum of its metal-famous collaborators. I’d probably be able to best describe Kvelertak as Darkthrone-meets-dad rock on the whole, but this album’s a little further under the Refused/Bronx hardcore column. It’s raw and rowdy, not terribly complicated but impeccably executed. And when I saw them perform at the Ruby Room in San Diego (now the Merrow - assuming it’s still there? San Diego friends let me know if I’m out of date on this one… just learned that Space is now The Banshee, RIP to the 18th bar that spot has been) there were so many guitar players on stage. So many. Like Scandinavian punk rock Skynyrd or something. Anyway, awesome record, then after three excellent records the singer quit to start his own viking project. But the band’s still going. I haven’t kept up, but if they’re still playing these songs, then you won’t hear me complain. Rating: 9.0