On the radio the other night I heard a second track from U2’s new album; “All Because of You.” Like “Vertigo,” it sounds like the band wanted a pseudo-garage-y, young, energetic sound – they roughed up their writing a bit, and played dirty but mixed it down slick (as necessary for radio play). It was OK, in an “I feel I should like it – it’s new U2, after all…” sort of way.
But the DJ followed it by spinning Weezer’s “Buddy Holly”, destroying whatever appreciation for “All Because of You” I’d accumulated pseudo-consciously. Faced with a band that made a truly great record out of their garages, How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb was revealed as an under-thought, overprocessed pop album; above-average radio fare but nothing more. If you are interested in a real “Vertigo”-named song, spin the Libertines’ Up The Bracket.