Re: u2: the height of Atmospheric Minimalism

F. Susan Fast ([email protected])
Sat, 26 Dec 1998 10:44:29 -0500

I was going to send this as a private post to Pete, who heard Martha Bayless
talk on PBS and wished for a transcript of her talk, but thought it might
interest the whole list. She might have had some interesting things to say
about "atmospheric minimalism" on the show--maybe she's softened her
opinions lately--but she wrote a book a couple of years
ago called _Hole in our Soul: the Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American
Popular Music that makes me furious (I can't get
through the book because I think her opinions are pretty much completely
misguided); she writes 4 pages on U2 that I think are out to lunch, in which
she uses this phrase "atmospheric minimalism." Here's an edited version:
read it and weep that such junk could be published by the University of
Chicago Press!
_______

I am not denying the possibility of musical creativity within atmospheric
minimalism: if the Velvet Underground had stayed together for a decade,
refining and varying each element in their formula, they might have
developed a rich, enveloping sound like that of U2. The Irish band that
gave [Sinead] O'Connor her first break (by letting her sing backup on an
early album [my comment: huh?]), U2 was started in Dublin in the punk
era....Though their fans will not like to hear it, what U2 has really become
is an art rock band. And it's a loss, because all those light shows and
giant video screens flashing images and "buzzwords" obscure the group's most
distinctive quality, apart from it's sound: Bono's way with _real_
words....Regrettably [With or Without You and I Still Haven't Found What I'm
Looking For] are like the handful of hit singles that emerged from art rock:
their shapeliness only proves the general rule of shapelessness...[like]
Bullet the Blue Sky, a tuneless drone whose sole claim to artistic
"seriousness" is its denunciation of U.S. policy in Nicaragua....U2's music
seeks the same exalted, oceanic emotion sought by art rock, but it also has
the same weakness: romantic grandiosity unsupported by romantic musical
architecture. Like the worst of art rock, the worst of U2's music is hollow
and pretentious, a form of kitsch reaching for, but failing to grasp, the
"big emotions." Despite the wry title and the best efforts of high-tech
producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois, U2's 1992 [she could at least get the
date right] album Achtung baby, Chooses art rock grandiosity over the modest
but realizable ambitions of the popular song. The verses and choruses are
printed out for the eye to see, but not shaped for the ear to hear. Listen
to the first thirty seconds of any track, and you will have heard the rest.
Laden with vocal histrionics and sonic trim, the album is little more than
state of the art wall paper....Even more telling is the comaprison with an
older musician greatly admired by U2 [Van Morrison]....One would think that
such tribute would lead to emulation, but it cannot, because none of these
postpunk performers have anything like Van Morrison's background, talent or
craft. As Bono admits: "I have no musical background...."

-------

Susan

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