U2
Songs Of Surrender (Island)
For Songs Of Surrender, U2 have ‘reimagined’ 40 selections from their discography. Some fans might deem it sacrilegious to tamper with The Joshua Tree or Achtung Baby, yet the band’s four-decade-plus history has seen many occasions – in stadiums, subways or TV studios – where stripped-back renditions of U2 songs have proven to resonate emotionally on a large scale.
This new four-disc collection should be no different. It’s been produced by The Edge with Bob Ezrin, who worked with Lou Reed on his Berlin album; there, Reed’s voice is at the fore, every syllable dripping with feeling and building from a whisper to an emotional crescendo, and Bono seems to have hit a similar vein here. Prime examples of this are the new versions of Electrical Storm, Stay or All I Want Is You; elsewhere, The Fly is dragged into 70s Stax Records-like territory which works incredibly well, as does Songs Of Surrender as a whole.
words DAVID NOBAKHT
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