U2 - "Pop" (1997)

Well, it's been a month since I wrote my last review on this blog. So much for putting 'one record a day' in the URL! But due to popular demand, I have decided to end my hiatus by reviewing U2's Pop, an album which I do not own on vinyl and thus can't exactly blue bin. Oh well. Since my blue bin is full anyways, I decided to invent a new conceit for this blog, which is to review the albums I listen to on my iPod on the way to and from work. But don't worry, I plan to continue to review vinyls too!

As for Pop, it continues the U2 trend of the 90s in dabbling with techno and electronica. Although I would strongly hesitate to call this good, I do have to give some credit to the group for not making total asses of themselves with albums like this one and Zooropa. My feeling, and I doubt I am alone in this, is that the strengths of U2 were always the righteous power of Bono and the Edge's thick, textured guitar playing. During their electronic period, these elements were basically gone or severely reduced. Still, whether it was their litany of hip producers of the time, or the Edge proving himself to be a versatile multi-instrumentalist, Pop features a lot of interesting guitar loops and samples and arrangements that frequently shift between moods and textures in a way that seemed beyond the band's grasp in the 80s.

So it's not the electronic music influences that make this a mediocre album, but rather, the fact that the busy arrangements ultimately can't mask what is Bono's weakest set of songs. Apart from the soaring, Joshua Tree throwback ballad "Staring at the Sun," there is little emotional power to be found here, and like even the best U2 albums, the melodies are mostly AWOL. The better songs are interesting mostly for their arrangements (like "MOFO" with its pumped-up bass line), and even some songs that do appear to have a lot going for them ("Discotheque") fail to gel into something cohesive. Still, it's all mostly mediocre to decent, apart from the truly wretched "Miami" (think Bono near-rapping over an industrial dance beat), so I can't get too angry about Pop. But if I could blue bin it, I would.