I'm having a love/hate relationship with the album and haven't reconciled it yet. Not sure if I will. I prefer the band when they are out in the ether experimenting with new sounds/styles but trying to make it more palatable to the mainstream (i.e. pretty much their approach to their 90s works - hey it's this stuff they really got me into them and I don't apologise for that).

I have been listening to some songs off NLOTH quite regularly of late (I am a big fan of Magnificent, Boots, White as Snow, FEZ and Breathe). I have found that Boots, FEZ and Breathe are awesome songs for driving down the highway at high speed :)

But, I really despise some of the others (i.e. Moment of Surrender, Crazy) and find others just quite ordinary and a rehash of the "glory days." I probably will never get over The Edge rehashing the riff from The Fly in the title track - I just find it really lazy - hence my preference for their more punk, grungy alternative version of that song - I still hope they start playing the alternative version live in 2010.

I've said it on a couple of other threads, but I think the idea of releasing a few EPs of experimental material over the course of 2009-10 would have been a better approach - it would have been a more measured way of getting more recent fans used to U2's experimental side - I mean c'mon - after all these years we know that the 'real' U2 want to make cutting edge (excuse the pun) inspiring music. The days we currently live in aren't conducive to sudden, massive change within any realm of social/political/pop culture unfortunately and I kinda feel that the band (or Univeral Music) may have watered down NLOTH on that realisation (because they didn't want to completely alientate people).

For me, the album has no central point, no real focus - I guess that's at least consistent with the album's title. :)

To me NLOTH sounds like a blend of the previous two albums with a few tricks and quirks from Brian Eno thrown into the mix. This has been disappointing for me considering Bono was previously hamming this album up to be "Achtung Baby on steroids."

I own all of U2's albums, EPs, many singles and rarities etc. I don't see NLOTH as U2's worse album, but this is the only album I've had the most difficulty with to date. I like a challenge - I may come around eventually... :)

If my two cents is worth anything, I would like to see U2 release "songs of ascent" as a very advertised experimental EP of about 8 songs - preferably under a less Christian sounding name - early in 2010 (at the same time that the Spiderman score is released) and, then release another EP of around 5-8 live songs from the current tour around Sept 2010.

Anyway, I'll shut up now.