Listened to it a few times now. I wasn't sure if it was going to happen, but finally someone put out a better album than Sonic Youth this year. It's awesome.

The weird thing is you can order the Japanese version from amazon.co.jp for about $24 (be careful, the site lists the U.S. import version first).

Better yet, you can order the British version with "Fast Cars" from amazon.co.uk for about $14, plus shipping. I have ordered other CDs from there and the shipping cost wasn't bad. I have ordered on Sunday and I've always had the CD by the following weekend, usually by Thursday.

How limited is this limited edition set anyway? Any ideas?

BTW, I have been listening to this for days now, and love it
(most of it anyway). :)

Is the DVD in the bonus set going to be the right region for me to use? Or should I just order the CD by itself and be safe? The crap we go through just to get 1 exclusive song! :rolleyes:

I'm sure the DVD will not be Region 1, but yes, you can order just the CD. I figure I'll order just the CD from the UK, then buy the CD/DVD here and give the U.S. CD to a friend of mine.

Yeah, I don't get why the UK and Japan get a new U2 album with 12 tracks, and the U.S. gets 11, especially considering the omitted song is the source of the album title. Are American record companies now actively trying to piss off their customers?

Fast Cars is on the cd in the US box set with book. It's not on the other two versions.

Are you sure its on the LE set? It is not on the track listing at Amazon.com and U2.com mentions nothing of the bonus song for the LE set.

People that have it in hand are reporting it does have Fast Cars on it (US version)

Sweeeeeet! Looks like Fast Cars will be on the U.S. version after all!

Can somebody tell me a little more about how the box set is packaged? I've only seen a scan of the oversized cover, and I'm not sure about getting the set because of the packaging.

Let's be clear, it's on the Collectors Edition. No reports of it being on the Deluxe or Regular editions. (At least yet)

I posted a link to a pic in the very first post of this thread.

The version I ordered was the one with the hard cover book and the DVD. I better be getting Fast Cars. :D

If you look at the image of the Collector's Edition on Amazon, it does mention 12 songs on the cover. That would mean Fast Cars is included.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0...1.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

"Sometimes You Can't Make it on Your Own" is a great song.

What exactly is on the DVD?

pitchfork review

U2
How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
[Interscope; 2004]
Rating: 6.9
U2 has been crowned the biggest band in the world so many times that, at least conceptually, they've finally managed to transcend themselves, ditching their earthly digs and assuming cartoonish proportions. And that might be why the four silhouettes currently twitching across America's TV screens, jerkily promoting U2-branded iPods over big, neon expanses, seem so eerily apropos: the flesh and blood members of U2 have been reduced to signifiers, mock-ups, representatives. They are bigger than their band.

Produced by arena-guru Steve Lillywhite (with help from longtime twiddlers Daniel Lanois, Brian Eno, and Flood), U2's 11th LP, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, is brash, grungy, and loud-- everything R.E.M. tried (and failed) to be on Monster, and everything U2 opted out of being on 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind. Still, Atomic Bomb is not an especially surprising record. It's a classic mix of colossal ballads and jerky rockers-- part-The Unforgettable Fire, part-Achtung Baby. Theoretically, Atomic Bomb weds classic U2 (echoing guitars, big sound, soaring vocals) with nu-U2 (experimental tweaks, electronic flourishes) but, high aspirations aside, the only marriage the record ultimately achieves is the union of good U2 and bad U2. So take a deep breath and prepare for a tiny handful of outstanding tracks and a whole mess of schmaltzy filler.

U2 may be a staunchly democratic machine (ask Eno), but Bono is still singularly responsible for propelling U2-as-uber-group forward, leering out from behind oversized yellow goggles, crusading righteously to reduce Third World debt, campaigning against AIDS, spitting post-Beat induction speeches from Jann Wenner's Hall of Fame podium, bobbing stupidly for Apple, talking and talking and talking about himself. Publicly, U2 are overblown and decadent, sporting silly, abstract monikers and booking colossal stadium tours, calling presidents, wearing sunglasses in the dark, anchoring the Superbowl, pushing products. Bono is 43 years old, boasts remarkable sway both inside and outside the pop culture sphere, and fronts one of the most universally recognizable rock bands of all time: He is a neo-superstar-- global, important, impossibly entertaining, and forever tiptoeing the line between wholly extraordinary and idiotically self-obsessed.

Despite a deliberately leading album title-- and one lone, overtly suggestive song title ("Love and Peace Or Else")-- How to Dismantle An Atomic Bomb is a curiously apolitical record, more about love and loyalty (and the 2001 death of Bono's father) than impending global doom. The decision to sidestep bold politicking and instead highlight feelings-and-guitars is a particularly compelling one right now, given the super-charged months preceding the record's release (and the melange of global conflicts now escalating to new levels of absurdity). Listeners are left wondering if Bono's elbows-deep international activism has somehow turned him off to the (comparably nebulous) effort of writing protest songs-- has all the dirt under his fingernails made the act of emoting into a microphone seem a little less urgent? "Saving the world is now a daily chore," Bono joked to The New York Times-- even in jest, it's a completely ridiculous thing to say. And yet?

Deliberately or not, Bono-as-bespectacled-celebrity-crusader seeps into nearly everything U2 does, sometimes to significant aesthetic effect: When Bono starts cawing urgently about a place called "Vertigo", declaring it "everything I wish I didn't know," it's possible that he's talking about girls or his father or his band-- or Bono might be squealing about something far worse, something awful, something most of us are lucky enough to have never witnessed. The problem is that it's extraordinarily difficult to ever really know exactly what Bono is talking about. Almost without exception, Bono yowls vague, cliched observations, his sentiments always awkwardly bombastic or hopelessly maudlin (check "Miracle Drug," where we are invited to ponder how "Freedom has a scent/ Like the top of a newborn baby's head," or "A Man and A Woman", where we contemplate "the mysterious distance between a man and a woman," or even just repeated-- seriously!-- "Where is the love?" demands.)

Loads of listeners have already noted that opener "Vertigo" bears an odd resemblance to The Supremes' gorgeously desperate "You Keep Me Hanging On", except "Vertigo" is framed by a classic punk shout-down where-- get this!-- Bono's totally singing in Spanish! Wait, he said catorce! It's a classic U2 moment: worldly, frantic, irritatingly deliberate. But when the Edge slams into his guitar, hollering a smirky "Hola!" to Bono's quasi-confrontational "Hello, hello!" it's awfully easy to forgive: "Vertigo" is hopelessly appealing, somehow growing less stupid and more compelling with each listen.

"Vertigo" is followed by a pair of swirly half-ballads, the plodding, overblown "Miracle Drug" and the super-sappy "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own", before we're mercifully handed "Love and Peace Or Else", a snarly, throbbing bit of solace. "Love and Peace" opens with a platter of ominous noise, shaky guitar grumbles rubbing up against high-pitched whines. Drums rumble, and Bono lodges his best semi-seductive demand: "Lay down, lay down." "Love and Peace" is chased by the equally exhilarating "City of Blinding Lights", an earnest and galactic fight song, and the sort of track that's best enjoyed in cars and airplanes, simply because it encites so much giddy movement. But "City of Blinding Lights" is the record's climax, and How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb begins its gnawing descent almost immediately, culminating with disastrous closer "Yahweh", a whiny, monotonous mess that's easily one of the worst songs U2 have ever recorded.

Maybe the biggest problem with Atomic Bomb is just that it sounds so much like U2, and their semi-absurd, totally unparalleled ubiquity has left all of us just a tiny bit tired of listening to things that sound like U2. This isn't completely their fault-- they tried to change (see the questionable Zooropa or the disastrous Pop), and we didn't like that, either. Bono has talked publicly about U2's longevity and quasi-diversity, crediting their shape-shifting to his band's unbreakable internal bonds-- U2 can afford to mess around, because the "spirit" of the band is so strong, so infinitely recognizable. But maybe U2's immortality is also their biggest curse-- and now they're forced to wallow in superstardom, forever perpetuating their own colossal myth.

-Amanda Petrusich, November 22nd, 2004

Pitchfork hates "miracle drug." Surprise.

Some news:

U2 is playing a free concert today in NYC at the Empire Fulton Ferry State Park at 3 pm (Nov. 22) It's supposed to be a 30-minute concert and is being filmed by MTV.

Also
U2 playing NYC from the back of a truck…
~E // 22-11-04 // 04:16 PM // full post (3)
Robin contacted us to say U2 were playing in front of Columbia University at approx 11:15 EST.

Eyewitness reports confirm the rumour we reported previously, saying the band are playing from the back of a flatbed truck, and will be making random stops throughout the city all day until the concert at 3. Let’s hope they’ve buckled up!

At 12:30 people arriving at Washington Square Park were redirected to the Brooklyn location, but with more police showing up it is possible Washington Square Park will be hit later down the road. The “official” at Washington Square Park also mentioned the Brooklyn taping will be at 4 pm EST, not 3 as previously reported.

Jonathan mailed in to say the band are actually filming the video for “All Because of You” during the performances on the flatbed truck.

More info as it comes in…

Wow. Could that reviewer hate U2 any more? It's quite obvious after reading her review she's never cared for their music and was asked to review their latest album. She's entitled to her opinion, of course, just didn't think she should have been the one doing the review.

Does anyone have the complete track list for The Complete U2 set coming out on iTunes tomorrow? I've been searching for a while and can't seem to find anything.

As for How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, awesome album but need to hear it a few more times to place it in relation to JT and AB. :thumbsup: for putting a stream on their website and MTV.com so I could listen to it before my cd comes.

I've been wondering myself. Since it says the additional songs are unreleased, I'm guessing it's something other than b-sides. Hopefully it's not a bunch of remixes.

I couldn't agree more. It really seems like no matter what U2 had put out she was determined to give it a bad review.

Well, there goes that guy's credibility. Zooropa is an excellent album, from the lovely Stay to the kickass Cash closer. POP ain't too shabby either. Get a clue, dude

I don't think Amanda is a dude.

Hate with a tint of jealousy. I get the impression that her "time of the month" lasts 365 days of the year!