Six years after
Songs of Experience -- and nearly a decade after
Songs of Innocence --
U2 delivered
Songs of Surrender, an album whose title suggests it's either part of a trilogy or the album where the band decided to finally succumb to the forces attempting to pull it down to the ground. Given that a collection of remakes inherently feels like a retreat, the latter interpretation seems more likely. Named partially after
Bono's 2022 memoir, Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, the project -- available in a couple of iterations, including a four-LP set where each volume is named after a bandmember -- finds each member of the group cherry-picking ten of their favorite
U2 songs, and then
the Edge spearheading "intimate" rearrangements of them. Largely anchored by -- but by no means limited to -- acoustic guitars,
Songs of Surrender is subdued, handsome, and tasteful, music made from the vantage point of reflection rather than risk. There's nothing on
Songs of Surrender that sounds precisely like the originally released versions -- studio effects and electric guitars have been stripped away, the rhythms don't thunder -- yet nothing here quite surprises.
Bono's lyrical alterations are subtle, even when they amount to more than the tweaking of a stray line; giving "Stories for Boys" a mature makeover or rewriting "Walk On" for Ukraine doesn't quite change the emotional thrust of the songs. Apart from
Adam Clayton's album, which contains inversions of such loud rockers as "Vertigo" and "The Fly,"
U2 doesn't stretch the boundaries of what acoustic-based rock would be: it's all ballads and anthems, songs that can be sustained by drumming. Pros that they are,
U2 deliver smooth, polished performances that are handsome and, yes, intimate but not especially compelling. It's stylish background music that sounds a bit like it was designed to be heard in chain coffeehouses during the late 2000s. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine
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