What is it about U2 that I just can't take to? It's a fair question, and one that I've considered off and on over the past twenty years or so, usually around the time they release a new album and when I invariably find myself not liking it. It's not so much an out and out hatred that I have, but I've never been able to deal them on any level whereby their music gives me an unalloyed pleasure. There's been the occasional song yes - any band active for so long would struggle not to produce at least something worthwhile. But for every moment of clarity that takes our relationship step forward, the band - either individually or collectively - will do something that irks enough to shove them back three paces and have me clamouring for a divorce.
It's not just down to Bono either. I know his extra curricular activities of charitable worthiness are a lightning rod directing mass loathing for many, but I can't say they've ever bothered me all that much. I find it very easy to separate Bono the singer from Bono the UN Peace Ambassador (or whatever) simply because I find Bono a very easy person to ignore. Full stop. Which is odd in the context of U2, because for a man with seemingly endless things to say outside of his band, he never has much to say for himself when he's with them.
Take 'Discotheque' for example. A direct continuation of U2's post-modern 're-invention' that began with 'The Fly', 'Discotheque' lays on a similar junkyard wall of sound but this time it's sifted through a dance filter that softens the hardness into something more fluid. Yet for all its silicon valley industrial montage of 'can't stop' busy-ness, 'Discotheque' is as hollow as a blown egg with only its own noise and a vague sense of their newly found irony (a dance track from the future called 'Discotheque'? Oh how very droll) holding it all together. This U2 Mk2 always have an in-built aspiration to lead the pack, but in their blinkered attempts to predict or ride the zeitgeist, they usually find themselves one step behind it. Yet crucially for them, at the same time they're always enough of a step to the left of it to give their music the impression of originality and innovation, even when the actuality is the exact opposite.
On 'Discotheque' the cut up lyrics ("You know you're chewing bubblegum, you know what that is. But you still want some, you just can't get enough of that lovie dovie stuff" - what does it mean? Not the foggiest sorry), car crash guitars and newly found dance angles are crude image panels from a simple zoetrope that only give the illusion of movement by virtue of moving so quickly. Slow it down enough to scratch the glossy painted surface and it reveals the lines and numbers of the template beneath that the band painstakingly painted it by, and with no apparent joy either. And when the band themselves don't sound like they're enjoying it much, then it doesn't bode well for the rest of us. Not for me anyway; like most of their output, I don't hate it, but then I don't like it much either.
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