giggle pop

Sorry it’s a long one. If you are not a U2 fan you will probably be bored out of your mind.

I consider myself a bit of an expert on the band U2. I have been a step beyond obsessed with the band for a quite a long time. I have assembled a collection of every album, almost every single (at least the ones with interesting b-sides) a decent collection of live tracks as well. Keep in mind this is all before iTunes came out with there complete U2 set which was good by all means, but still not entirely “complete.” I have had more than one period in my life where I have spent months at a time listening to pretty much nothing besides the band. I used to know every word to Joshua Tree and War off the top of my head, and it just gets worse from there. I am also a bit of an amateur historian on the band as well. I even met Bono once before one of their concerts, he was awesome, he sat and talked to me for a while, I could barely speak and was in complete shock. The Edge and Adam were also wandering around but I did not get a chance to talk to them. It was very cool meeting my hero and have him actually live up to coolness expectations on pretty much every level (which is hard to do after years of near worship).

What I am getting at here is that I know a thing or two about the bands music to say the very least. They are coming out with a new album tomorrow. I think some of it was available on their website already, but whenever they have a new album I make an effort to avoid listening to anything but the first single so I can get the right first impression of it. At some point in the next few days I will post my initial thoughts on the new album. It will probably take me a few months of listening to get my real thoughts on it, and as I discovered with most of their past albums the meanings change immensely for me as I collect new experiences in life.

The past few albums seemed to come out and say what I needed to hear at just the right time. “All that you can’t Leave Behind” came out my senior year of high school and “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb” came out my senior year of college. On the whole I prefer their earlier works, “Achtung Baby” is probably my favorite for a lot of reasons I wont discuss now. But the former two mentioned really managed to help me through some hard times in life. Now here I am just out of law school, trying to figure out the next steps in my life. This means I probably had higher expectations of this album than I should, the question is will it live up to expectations on the first few listens.