Tulip Frenzy

The title track of No Line On The Horizon shows U2 living in another green world, before and after science.  While the album plays at par — since Pop, which is an underrated masterpiece, I’ve considered it a welcome development if there are as many as four songs on any U2 album that you’d put on a playlist — there are some remarkable moments.

The first, of course, is the opening cut, said title track, which basically has U2 playing along, karaoke-style, on top of an Eno loop so timeless, you’d think the little genius had been carrying it around with him on a floppy disk.  

And then there’s this: listen to “Get On Your Boots,” which is a pretty great song.  Listen to Bono’s phrasing.  I carried it around in my head for a week, going, “Where have I heard this before?”  And of course, it came to me: Bono’s singing in the exact rhythm that Elvis Costello snarls out “Pump It Up” from This Year’s Model.   It’s so close, it would fool the Shazam algorithm.   Good stuff, that, and the Eno sampling by, well, Eno is sublime.

This entry was posted on March 9, 2009 at 5:31 pm and is filed under Music with tags Elvis Costello, Eno, No Line On The Horizon, Tulip Frenzy, U2. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.