Product description
-------------------
U2 - Zooropa - CD
.co.uk
------
Zooropa is almost perverse in the way it subverts every
expectation we've ever had of U2. The world's most serious rock
band releases an album of advertising parodies, Prince
imitations, girl group tributes, taunts of rich girls and
straightforward love songs. The album opens with the title tune,
a vision of a near-future Europe that finds its common culture in
advertising slogans and synth programs. As Bob Dylan once did
with "Like a Rolling Stone", U2 takes on "Daddy's Gonna Pay
for Your Ced Car" at a spoiled rich girl who discovers her
life of privilege has sapped all her strength. Bono's vocal has a
Dylanesque sneer, but the Edge's guitar and Mullen's percussion
create the sounds of a snarled traffic jam and Clayton's
in-your-face bass line throbs like a migraine headache. By
contrast, "The First Time" is the most genuinely romantic track
U2 has ever recorded. The most surprising and most pleasurable
tracks on the album, though, are a pair of R&B inuation
numbers, "Babyface" and "Lemon". Nothing better serves
overextended rock stars than a return to the music's origins at
the sock hop. The results aren't always fully satisfying, but
they do reveal an unglimpsed, unexpected side to one of the
world's most celebrated, most ambitious pop acts. --Geoffrey
Himes
P.when('A').execute(function(A) {
A.on('a:expander:toggle_description:toggle:collapse',
function(data) {
window.scroll(0,
data.expander.$expander[0].offsetTop-100);
});
});
Review
------
U2 was unassailable by the mid 90s - they had married
art and commerce in a glorious union. They had underlined the
post-modernism of Achtung Baby with the Zoo TV Tour, which saw
Bono ridiculing his band's vaunted position with enough sincerity
as to not lose their audience, and in the process, gain a new
one.
Zooropa took the restless flippancy of Achtung Baby and
multiplied it. As every lumpen rock band seemed to latch on to
glitter and quotation marks, U2 were still ahead of the pack,
releasing this left-turn of a 'mini-album', produced by Flood,
Brian Eno and the Edge. It was a European answer to Britpop and
grunge, which almost perversely seemed to ditch any trademarks
associated sonically with the band.
Using all of Eno's tricks and atmospherics, they took what was
essentially some slight material, dressed it in filmic,
artificial beauty and continued their march as the greatest band
in the world. The title track emerges out of two minutes of
atmospherics; and comes in two parts. Numb - a collection of
negative instructions - is a critique on the relentless and
disposable nature of popular culture.
A lot is down to the album's sound - the synth and percussion
clash at the start of Daddy's Gonna Pay For Your Ced Car; the
warmth of Adam Clayton's bass on Some Days Are Better Than
Others. The ''man builds a city'' refrain in Lemon is Eno
revisiting his choral work with Talking Heads on Remain In Light,
using the voice as another instrument, to lustrous effect. It is
only the final track, The Wanderer, sung by Johnny Cash, which
reinstates the real and provides a link with the mythical
heartlands of America they spent the latter half of the 80s
searching for.
For something that was essentially an adjunct to its predecessor
(and much was made about how quickly it was delivered) Zooropa
still has a delightful hi-tech raggedness to it. It is a bit
serious and a bit daft at the same time. Remarkably, once again,
U2 had pulled it off. --Daryl Easlea
Find more music at the BBC ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/go/syn//albumreviews/-/music/ ) This link
will take you off in a new window
See more ( javascript:void(0) )