You fool, you’ve activated the HH summoning charm.
I was wondering if you’d invite the devil into your house. Since you did… Achtung Baby is about the 5th or 6th best U2 record. Which puts it maybe in the top 1,000 records of the 80s-90s. That’s a shitload of peers.
Nah- this is in my bones, not “conscious”
I’d agree with you but then we’d both be wrong. Achtung is surpassed only by The Unforgettable Fire in their discography.
We disagree, again. The first time I literally cried at hearing a record from a band that meant everything to me at the time, said record coming after a hiatus of sorts, was “Physical Graffiti.” The second was “Technique.” The third was “Achtung Baby.”
Here is Edge, defining “Cool” even if Bono already had the camera taken off Edge during the masterwork:
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While I am a huge fan of Unforgettable Fire, and think it’s their masterpiece, I also think Boy, War, and Joshua Tree are superior to Achtung Baby. If you want to argue about October, I won’t push back, but their first five records were head and shoulders a superior time period to anything they did after Joshua Tree.
Loosen up …
As good as it gets, from ‘Zooropa’
Auchtung Baby was a bit of a leapfrog from their previous work.
For that style of music I feel they really nailed it. I love that album.
Zooropa had some strong songs but … after that the gems got fewer and further (? farther) between.
I think with certain bands you should evaluate them recognizing which phase of the band you’re evaluating. Sometimes it’s almost like two completely different bands. There’s pre Joshua Tree U2 and post Joshua Tree. It seems like the band on either side of that fulcrum was reaching for something very different musically. Better, worse? I don’t know, different.
REM is another - pre Out of Time, Automatic for the People, pick one, and post. Two very different types of bands doing very different things.
I guess what I’m saying is it seems unproductive to me to try to compare the Unforgettable Fire with Achtung Baby because although it’s the same four dudes, they were totally different in terms of what they were trying to accomplish. Or so it appears to me.
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I’m gonna disagree, because I think Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum are the aberrations in the catalog, where the trajectory of the band changed. They rode that tangent as far as they could and came back to themselves in '92, albeit very changed. Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum, for all of their so-called Americana or roots music, still had a lot of that experimental U2 in them (viz One Tree Hill and Heartland, to name two). Achtung is where they went back to being U2 to me, and that’s exaclty how I felt when Iheard The Fly for the first time: U2 is back.
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Excellent analogy.
“Eponymous” is on my “Deserted Island” list.
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As for REM…I always said that Document was their masterpiece, but the album that’s really grown on me in recent years is Reckoning.
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Automatic will always be my favorite. Every song, no notes (although society absolutely drubbed “Everybody Hurts” into the ground.)
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Can we really count greatest hits albums?
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REM is decidedly in that category chuck describes. The band that made Chronic Town is not the same band that made Automatic which is not the same one that made New Adventures.
Speaking of which, I somehow procured a vinyl copy of Chronic Town probably in about 1984 or so. I don’t even remember how I got it. When I got rid of most of my record collection in favor of CDs in the early 90s, I hung on to a handful, dragging them around numerous moves and relocations, even though I had no turntable. For whatever reason, it was one of them. Fast forward to a few years ago and I started to rebuild my vinyl collection, and lo and behold it was there, unplayed for at least 15 years. It still sounds fantastic.
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Man, I have tried to forget New Adventures.
My wife’s favorite is Monster, and I find it an absolute overreaction of trying to find their old sound.
I have heard the band say that New Adventures is their favorite, or at least Stipe’s favorite. I thought it was…ok.
This is true for them for sure, but nothing turns me off a band more than when they don’t grow and seem to make the same album more than once (or for decades in the case of AC/DC and others). I like a nice progression. Overall I’m more of a Life’s Rich Pageant guy for their early stuff, but generally listen to more of the Green and beyond records, with Monster a particular favorite…
So today will be an REM day here at the home office thanks to HH.
The fellow that owns the local record shop says he will occasionally pick one artist and listen to everything in their catalogue, in chronological order, just for that reason. I’ve never done that, but it’s a cool idea that I need to try.