Featured Album: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
Friday 8/22/08 2:29 pmno comments
For one reason or another, U2’s 2004 release How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb is the album everyone loves to hate. Four years after it’s release, I am beginning to realize it suffered the same poor reception as R.E.M.’s album of the same year, Around the Sun, did. Both albums lack a clear musical direction. There are several strong songs, but as a whole album package, both are fairly weak. Atomic Bomb cannot seem to decide what it wants to be.
While still in production, Bono described Atomic Bomb as “punk rock from Venus”. Well, sorry Bono, it’s far from it (whatever punk rock from Venus is suppose to sound like). I feel that U2 took too long to make this record and lost focus somewhere along the way. In fact, one can almost hear this if the track listing was written and recorded chronologically (more on that later). This feels more like a collection of songs U2 happen to all record in 2004 rather than an album.
However, this is not going to be a complete Atomic Bomb bashing article. This album came out in the first half of my senior year in high school and was the first album that I really listened to and paid attention musically. This album has some really good instrumentation and actually has a lot going on if you listen closely. The really strong songs on this album are really obvious on first listen and are in fact really strong. So because of the time this was released, I have a little emotional connection to the album, which is why I cannot completely hate it.
OK, now for the track by track breakdown…
