Adam Clayton, Bono, The Edge, and Larry Mullen Jr. of U2 from the cover of the “Streets of Dreams” single
First Thought Fridays is a (mostly) weekly column offering quick-hit takes on some of the albums released this week, serving up first impressions, favorite or least favorite songs, and whether or not they’re worth a second listen. Check back for more each Friday night or Saturday morning.
In a normal week, we usually post seven to ten articles around these parts. Thanks to the overflowing bounty that is the St. Louis International Film Festival, we’ve posted 34 articles between last Friday and this Friday…and I wrote six of them. I planned to keep this column short and sweet this week, and while I only reviewed three albums, I had a lot to say about two of them so the overall column is as long as it ever is. Oops.
One bonus mention: last October, I raved about Peel Dream Magazine’s album Taurus. Even though that album was already a collection of bonus songs from the sessions of their previous album, it turns out there were even more leftovers hiding in the back of the fridge. Taurus is back with four additional tracks that all heavily lean into the band’s Sufjan Stevens-esque side. They’re very good, and hey, they’re a good excuse to give this excellent but overlooked album another listen. Will I Listen Again?: Absolutely.
Sasha Alex Sloan, And the Crowd Goes Mild (10K Projects): I’m usually a “melody/catchiness first, words second” sort of music fan, but Sasha Alex Sloan’s last album, 2024’s Me Again, completely bowled me over with its devastating lyrics, delivered over spare arrangements primarily centered around a lone acoustic guitar. The album hit me so hard that it landed at #2 on my favorite albums of that year.
On her latest, the impeccably titled And the Crowd Goes Mild, Sloan is still in slow-and-sad mode, but the instrumentation is fuller this time out, with a more forward, driving rhythm section. Songs like “Still Be Me” and “Keeping Score” start with the same acoustic guitar strum but instead build and build to big cathartic pop choruses. It’s a style that brings to mind Gracie Abrams, though I prefer Sloan: the music is more dynamic and, once again, the lyrics hit harder. This is, after all, a woman whose concert merch includes a baseball cap with “sorry for crying” embroidered on it; if she’s not hitting you right in the feels, she’s not doing her job right.
Dua Lipa’s last album was called “Radical Optimism”; here, Sloan has a song called “Delusional Optimism,” as in “you have to be delusional to be optimistic at this point,” which seems to be the album’s mission statement. Take a song like “Still Be Me,” which yearns for escape but also sees the futility in it, summing up its philosophy with this defeated chorus delivered over a surging pop beat:
“You could talk to god, you could change your job, you could paint our room/
I could change my hair and the clothes I wear, get a new tattoo/
We could get sober, we could start over in a new city/
But you’ll still be you/
And I’ll still be me”
On Me Again, the song that hit me the hardest was “Kids,” where Sloan sings of the heartbreak of caring for an aging parent and the bittersweetness of knowing that you’ll one day be on the receiving end of that care from your own children. By contrast, the songs on And the Crowd Goes Mild that I connected with the most address a much lower stakes but still very real problem: social disconnection in a post-COVID world. “2018” wistfully looks back at that year, Sloan flipping through old photos and not recognizing the prettier-than-she-remembers, more-carefree-than-she-knows-how-to-be-anymore person in those pictures. “Fun” more directly addresses the anxiety of social situations when you finally force yourself out of the house only to discover that “you don’t know how to have fun.” I struggle to think of a recent song I’ve related to more.
On And the Crowd Goes Mild, Sasha Alex Sloan once again proves herself as one of the best lyricists working today, delivering her incisive words with a quiver in her voice, the music lifting it up before it all inexorably, like a cresting wave before it crashes down onto the sand.
U2, Carnaval de Luz (Island): U2 has seemed adrift for most of the 21st century, chasing trends as they struggled to maintain Best Band in the World status. Especially by the time the band hit 2014’s Songs of Innocence and 2017’s Songs of Experience, the songs felt overly polished and overwrought, the lyrics too ponderous. There were still good songs along the way, but nothing that held a candle to their all-timer ‘80s and ‘90s albums. Then came Songs of Surrender, a COVID-era experiment in reinventing U2’s song catalog that was so plodding that I couldn’t even bring myself to listen to the whole thing.
With a nine-year wait since their last album of original material and an arbitrary deadline to complete it in time to celebrate the band’s 50th anniversary, Carnaval de Luz did not seem like it was going to be the release to break that streak. But break it, it does.
The most important thing about Carnaval de Luz is it’s the sound of four people who are clearly having fun. They’re not playing to trends, or to fan expectations, or even to their own expectations—their following their muse wherever it takes them. And where it mostly takes them is a lot of driving, up-tempo songs. The opening four-song salvo is heavily Latin-inspired—Bono has never dipped this far into his Spanglish vocabulary since he sang “Uno, dos, tres, catorce!”, and he makes the inspiration explicit in “The Mirror Maker,” a tribute to Spanish pop sensation Rosalía. “Silencio” kicks off the back half of the album with The Edge slinging guitars that strut and swagger harder than anything since “Vertigo.” “Midnight Sunshine” rides on a sassy drum shuffle from Larry Mullen Jr. and sunny disco guitars; it’s a sound unlike anything else I’ve heard from the band but man, am I here for it. (It also has the line “Don’t want to make a devil bigger, stop repeating his name,” which I just love.) “Can’t Stop Us Now” is also a late-album highlight, riding on Adam Clayton’s snaky bassline. Between these rockers are a pair of equally excellent slower songs: “The Greatest Show on Earth” is a classic U2 ballad built on Bono’s yearning vocals and those echo-drenched guitars that The Edge does better than anybody, while “Glorify” is a more atypical haunting slow-burner.
That said, it’s not all smiles and sunshine: “Superficiality” threatens to derail the whole thing when it arrives at track 5; its shiny-happy-people vibe feels contrived, the lyrics and Bono’s falsetto delivery are beyond embarrassing, and it’s followed by “If The World Is at War We Better Not Be,” a ponderous ballad that never comes in for a landing. It’s fortunate that the band seem to have sequenced the album with the vinyl in mind, putting those two turkeys at the end of side A and letting “Silencio” kick things back in gear to start side B. Last but not least is “Torn,” a duet with Dolly Parton and the last thing she recorded before her passing this summer. Parton brought the song to the band after Bono contacted her about collaborating and encouraged them to “see where you could take it.” It’s wonderful to hear Parton’s voice one last team and the song’s message of unity is well-intentioned, but the resulting song (credited to the band, Parton, and Johnny McDaid of Snow Patrol and Vega4) is ultimately just okay, lacking the oomph that makes so many other tracks here leap out of the speakers.
The album may not reach the heights of some of U2’s classics, but it has nine very strong songs (a pretty great success rate!) and finds the band excited and engaged in the act of making music again. I liked this record a lot, and it gives me great joy to say that, unlike U2’s last couple decades of releases, I really look forward to spending a lot more time with it. Will I Listen Again?: Definitely.
Yummm, Sillyputty (self-released): Yummm is the nom de rock for Matty Bedrosian, a Los Angeles-based artist who has previously worked with From Indian Lakes and CASANDRA. Yummm, however, is an almost-entirely-solo endeavor, with Bedrosian performing everything barring some background vocals from the aforementioned CASANDRA as well as Idle Empress’ Lauren Anderson. Songs like “Substance” and “Out of Touch” have the druggy, woozy fuzz of DIIV, but much of the rest of the album has more of an Alex G bedroom pop feel: the beats are hushed, the guitars are strummed, and the vocals are whispered, almost as if Bedrosian is recording late at night and trying not to wake the neighbors. The absolute best song is “Plug” (has Sirius XMU picked that one up yet? If not, it’s right up their alley), with other highlights including “Buck,” “Hog Heaven,” the ominous bass of “Yarrow,” and the lilting Sea and Cake-ish title track. Will I Listen Again?: Probably, especially the highlights. This is the style of indie rock I like best in small doses, and while the album barely cracks half an hour, I honestly will probably mostly engage with it a song at a time. | Jason Green
