The latest issue (as of when I started writing this post) of Rolling Stone names what to look forward in music this year. Under Best Collaboration, they named U2's "upcoming" album being produced by Danger Mouse (quotations mine - for reasons that will be seen).
Anyone who knows me knows that U2 is my all-time favorite band. And recently, I've become enamored with Danger Mouse: the first Gnarls Barkley album is great; he produced The Black Keys best known song and his influence is heard elsewhere on that album; and I can't seem to get Broken Bells songs out of my head despite listening to their debut album several times a week. So when news broke in October that the world's biggest rock band was working with one of music's most well regarded producers, I was ecstatic.
The thing is: we will never hear it as part of U2's main discography. We'll be lucky if we hear some portions of it in some sort of unreleased material compilation.
U2 is, to put it mildly, self-conscious. At the end of the 80s they went away to dream it all up again (their words), after a bad critical reaction to their last album of the decade. They spent the 90s pushing the boundaries of their music, reinventing and poking fun at themselves and rock cliches. This was the band at their creative peak. At the end of the 90s, again facing criticism, they returned to a more traditional sound and went back to a save the world incarnation.
In 2003, U2 spent a year recording with producer Chris Thomas, only to scrap it and work with someone they have previous extensive experience with. <sarcasm> The resulting album certainly doesn't have any songs that try to recall some of their classics. </sarcasm> Sessions with Rick Rubin in 2006 were similarly tossed, again to work with their go-to people. The album that was released in early 2009, "No Line on the Horizon" was to be more experimental, almost another reinvention. But they pulled back on those ambitions, and delayed the album because they hit a "rich songwriting vein". Many fans read the quote as "We're working on more radio friendly songs."
No Line was to be followed quickly by a companion album filled with more atmospheric and ambient songs left over from the No Line sessions. Two plus years later, with No Line not performing well, it seems unlikely we'll hear its sister. There's word of 3 other projects: the Spider-Man musical soundtrack, an album with songs tailor made for a club, and the Danger Mouse album. All of which sound like they're almost done - and are up in the air, because the band has paralysis by analysis and can't decide what to do.
This is the band that heavily influenced my belief that rock music is more about the journey and not necessarily the destination. It's about pushing yourself into uncharted waters, while retaining some semblance of accessibility. But now, it's about trying to be the biggest band in the world and not ruining their legacy - a legacy that was partly defined by reinvention. They weren't so afraid before, releasing companion albums and non-mainstream music, albeit under a different name.
I have to admit that for me, other bands have eclipsed U2 in terms of excitement during the lead-up to new music being released, namely Arcade Fire, Broken Bells, and Coldplay. This shows what playing it safe has done - the most hardcore fans can't muster the same energy for U2 as they once did. We've seen this all before: the big "This is our best work EVAR!" statements from the band followed by delays and favoring of sounds geared towards more casual fans. Time to regain some courage.
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