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Record #1007: U2 – No Line on the Horizon (2009)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / Leave a comment

Alright, let’s get the hot take out of the way right out of the gate. This is my favorite U2 record of the ’00s.

It certainly came as a surprise to me. As I was shotgunning their discography in order, the transcendent bliss of their ’90s work came crashing down when I got to All That You Can’t Leave Behind. How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb didn’t do much to change my mind (note: I’ve largely come around on both now). I put on No Line on the Horizon, gritting my teeth to see why the reviews I had read were so unkind.

So imagine my surprise when I ended up enjoying it quite a bit.

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Record #1006: U2 – How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / Leave a comment

After the success of 2000’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind, something funny happened. Namely, the Rock Revival, led by bands like The Strokes, Interpol, The Killers, and other students of the early 80s post-punk scene.

U2, themselves members of that original class, looked at the rise of these acts, then back at themselves, and sorta said, “didn’t we used to do that?” They then called up Steve Lillywhite, who produced their first three records, and set off to work on what Bono called “our first rock record,” a statement that’s probably rooted more in self-deprecation than accuracy.

In either case, it worked. It was an immediate commercial success, beloved by critics, and netted the group eight Grammys, as well as a few indelible hits. That said, it’s bogged down by some of the same self-consciousness of its predecessor, even if it is a bit more consistent.

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Record #1004: U2 – Pop (1997)

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After Achtung Baby and Zooropa demolished my prejudices against them, I cast a suspicious glance further down the catalog and said, “I better flippin’ hate Pop.”

Where I had only heard Zooropa used as a punchline, Pop had an even less flattering reputation. Over the years, it has often come up as an example of respected band dropping a real stinker. The band’s own opinions on the record haven’t helped rebut that reputation, and being the last record before All That You Can’t Leave Behind’s alleged return to form, Pop became the scapegoat for U2’s ill-advised detour into dance music. Outside of its accompanying tour, the group has rarely played any of these songs live.

But somehow, despite its reputation among both fans and the band themselves, this is the last great record they made.

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Record #1003: U2 – Zooropa (1993)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / Leave a comment

After having my perception of U2’s career shattered by the absolute bombshell that is Achtung Baby, I cast a suspicious glance at Zooropa. The only person I had ever heard speak positively about it said it was the only U2 album they liked, because it sounded nothing like U2. Other than that, it was used as a shorthand for how far the Irish post-punkers-turned-arena-heroes had gone off the rails. And coming online to U2’s existence around the time of All That You Can’t Leave Behind, even the band seemed to treat this record (and their 90s period in general) as an embarrassing and misguided detour.

So you can imagine my surprise when I found out it actually rules pretty hard.

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Record #1002: U2 – Achtung Baby (1991)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / Leave a comment

I have always freely admitted that I have some glaring blind spots in my musical knowledge. And some of them are embarrassing. It’s not unusual for me to miss important artists in scenes that I follow closely—sometimes that have even toured with my favorite bands (see: Manchester Orchestra, Touché Amoré).

But what is unusual is ignoring what many regard as the best album from one of my favorite bands.

I had somehow gotten the impression that Achtung Baby was where U2 had jumped the shark. Per the joke I would repeat loudly and often, U2 fell off halfway through The Joshua Tree and never recovered. Somehow, it took until last month for someone to challenge that assertion.

And while Achtung Baby was indeed a massive shift for the band, it wasn’t downward. The group ripped up most of their playbook and radically reinvented themselves, kicking off perhaps their most forward-thinking decade of work.

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Record #1001: U2 – The Joshua Tree (1987)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

There are fixed points in music history. Records that are so singular that they transcend reality and become the thing of myth. For U2, that mythology is The Joshua Tree. While people can debate what their best record is all day, The Joshua Tree is certainly the U2-iest.

All of their tendencies are indulged to satiety. All of their sonic experimentation, spirituality, sociopolitical consciousness, rock and roll historicity, American fetishism, and grand ambitions are at play, without much restraint. It’s not a perfect record—a couple moments just don’t land just right.

But my word, when they do land…

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Record #992: The Flaming Lips – American Head (2020)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

Few bands have had the run that The Flaming Lips had between The Soft Bulletin and The Terror. They managed to several albums of remarkably consistent quality while also sounding nothing alike, traversing from baroque symphonic rock to technicolor glam pop to dystopian psych freakout. While you could easily credit their entire body of work as one of the most singular and inventive careers in music, that period is one of my favorite runs of album in any discography.

I’ve lost track since. I said to some friends recently that I missed when The Flaming Lips were good. It’s maybe more accurate to say that I’ve been unable to keep up with the deluge of projects well enough to sort the inconsequential experiments from the proper albums. But out of this haze, American Head emerges with a seismic scope that combines the best parts of their disparate threads into one immense and gorgeous whole.

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Record #957: The Goo Goo Dolls – Dizzy Up the Girl (1998)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald

As a college freshman who thought he was way more knowledgeable about music than he was, I repeated often and loudly that there was one band that everyone loved, no matter what kind of music they usually listen to.

That band was the got dang Goo Goo Dolls. And as far as my horizons have been expanded since then, I still stand by it.

While on the surface, there might not seem to be anything all that exceptional about their brand of uber-radio-friendly pop rock, there are several reasons this record went 5x Platinum—and absolute megahit “Iris” is only one of them.

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Record #949: The Cure – Standing On a Beach (1986)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

I usually don’t put much stock in compilations. Most of them are cash grabs aimed at casual fans, and as someone who prefers to listen to songs in the context of their album, they offer little value to me.

There are, however, some exceptions. For instance, if a band has released a significant number of non-album singles—especially if those singles were as formative to the band’s career as The Cure’s non-album singles were.

While Standing On a Beach was, in fact, intended to introduce American fans to the Cure’s back catalog after the success of The Head on the Door, it remains the best collection of the singles that had a huge impact on their career despite never appearing on an album—even more than Japanese Whispers or 2001’s Greatest Hits, making it an essential bit of Cure history.

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Record #942: Lewis – Even So (2002)

/ Nathaniel FitzGerald / 1 Comment

I’m not sure anything contributed more to my music taste than Deep Elm’s Emo Is Awesome, Emo Is Evil compilation (maybe Songs From the Penalty Box 4, but that’s a different story). Like many a Millennial youth, I grabbed a copy after seeing it next to the register at Hot Topic. I didn’t recognize a single name on the tracklist, but it introduced me to a group of bands that showed just how diverse emo could be, like Red Animal War, Planes Mistaken For Stars, Logh, Benton Falls, the Appleseed Cast (still an all time favorite), and so many more.

Lewis was on that compilation, but their contribution didn’t grab me. I mostly ignored them until I got a copy of Even So in a $1 Random CD sale the label was having. It didn’t take much convincing for that disc to join my regular listening rotation.

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