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U2: All finished and ready to go some time in March, Pop sees the band furthering their attempts at dance/rock crossover. Produced by Nellee Hooper, among others, there’s bits of techno and bits of trip-hop but it’s not an outright four to the floor dance extravaganza. The first single is Discotheque (reviewed in Single File) which is as good a place to start as any.
Single File
U2 go disco-tech
by Kevin Courtney
U2 “Discotheque” (Island)
Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the disco, U2 crash into 1997 with a brand new single, their first since 1995’s Batman Forever theme. Discotheque isn’t out for another month, so this review is a bit previous, but hey, why not jump on the bandwagon now, before it gets too crowded? The song’s title suggests 1970s retro, but the music is closer to The Chemical Brothers than to Saturday Night Fever. U2’s much-touted “dance influences” they’re right to the fore here, with Larry’s drums laying down a strident beat reminscent of The Fly, and The Edge mixing distorted guitars with crazy compressed electronic effects.
Bono’s disembodied, doubled-up voice squeezes into the cyber-spaces, sounding frazzled and frantic at first, then going all grungy and growling. The atmosphere is one of taut, stretched-out tension, as though the song was being pulled apart in four different directions, but then everything suddenly goes slack, resolving into a fluid, delayed-effect guitar lick by the Edge. Only trouble is, U2 seem so concerned with getting the sound and the style just right, they forgot to put in a tune for us mortals to sing along to. Nothing groundbreaking here, then, and it won’t give The Prodigy any sleepless nights, but it’s still a pretty brave attempt to keep up with the fast-changing zeitgeist. When the single is released in February, expect the remixes by Steve Osborne, David Morales and Howie B to feature heavily at your local disco.
- irish times
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