We're Not So Different, You and I

I am not a good person. I've known this for a long time now, but for some reason people insist on disbelieving me. It's true, though—I'm a bad man, and I work in an evil business, full of bitchy little plastic people with humorless agendas and fearful, envious hearts. It absolutely sucks, and yet conversely I feel right at home being a judgmental jerk among my peers and colleagues. Admitting that took a little while, but I've always felt inherently bad—or at least "not good"—and I think that is one of the reasons why I've lasted so long in this wretched industry. I've dispensed with the illusion that I'm a well-intentioned, vaguely friendly person full of good will toward all humanity.

All my best, most creative schemes are foiled by humanity, you see. My creative energy has always been negative, and for some reason this makes people uncomfortable. They keep insisting that I have patience for their wide variety of hang-ups, and they gripe bitterly when I don't—throwing around meaningless words like "empathy" and "trust" and "feelings" as if those concepts still carried currency with anyone over the age of five. I guess just don't really care what other people think, but I am in the hilarious position of working in a business where that is the central (perhaps even the only) commandment in this self-obsessed age: Thou Shalt Give A Shit About Everything.

Except I don't—the pathetic, insecure projections of positively-thinking people; the knee-jerk, reactionary humorlessness of self-gratifyingly serious people; the willful, fantasyland ignorance of delusional people; the smug sneering of hopelessly righteous people—I'm bored with it all. Humanity's emotional convulsions perennially fail to affect me. Or at least it all would affect me, if I bothered to take any of it personally, See, that's the key: I refuse to take any of it personally. Everyone always takes life, the universe, and everything too personally, and that's where the trouble starts. They are unnerved by the universe's inherent absurdity, and vehemently deny that any creation so awesome could be based on such a simple, contradictory concept. I mean, if God accidentally sneezes, are Her boogers not divine? Is Her snot-rag not a receptacle of genius? If I believed in God, that would be worth pursuing, but I don't really care either way, so fuck it.

Simple apathy isn't a viable engine of evil, though—no matter how many times people cite that "bad shit happens when good men do nothing" idea. That's flogging a wretched undead nag for sure. No, active badness is definitely where it's at. Nice guys not only finish last—they finish forgotten, if they even finish at all—and I do not intend to be forgotten, dude. Not for a few generations, at least. The best way to accomplish that, of course, is to selfishly inflict my DNA on the future via procreation, but the ensuing eighteen years of dedicated, loving parental care would be wholly unattractive to my egomaniacal sensibilities, even if beholding my new-born progeny would induce a flood of sympathetic brain chemistry. I am a creative thinker, though, and I do get that feeling from the things I create—be they for business or personal or mucus-expelling reasons—and since divinity complexes can be central traits of evil people, that's another check-swing, foul-tip strike against me.

A further failing is simple: I am a liar, and I've learned to accept that I will continue to lie, just like Henry Rollins. Indeed, I'm not really concerned with the morality of lying anymore—I don't mind lying to people, as long as the lie has a solid foundation beneath it and I won't be hurting anyone by doing so. So yes, I am a liar, but I am a very bad liar. Not a big liar—I've never brought down corporations or ruined marriages or cheated the IRS—but I couldn't be a successful big, sociopathic liar even if I wanted to, because I am lazy. Yes, I am a slave to sloth—as I've previously stated ad nauseam—and getting away with whopping lies is not a job for slackers. No, skillful prevarication is not the province of chronically tardy people with poor attitudes, and my attitude is very poor indeed—or rather it would be if it showed up on time. Now, that is not the way to claw your way up the ladder of service-oriented, self-affirming corporate culture, my friends, but it has long been my chosen path.

But that path is also no way to politely disengage oneself from political discourse at any level, and I have been hopelessly mired in American politics since the age of eleven. As one great contemporary philosopher describes it, "people who follow politics closely cannot comprehend people who aren't partially lying. They are intellectually paralyzed by literal messages." Yeah, as if "there's always got to be something else going on, man!" But there isn't. There's no light at the end of the tunnel and there's no secret cabal pulling the strings, let alone a capriciously benevolent divine being. Just the continual dull roar of humanity—boring, but to me, true. Whereas people who casually follow politics—or who are only beginning to follow politics—are singularly incapable of accepting figuratively-based thought. Face value is the only currency, and deliberative debate for its own sake is as suspicious and evil as black magic.

And that's absurd—a universal virtue if ever there was one—but since the most interesting place to be is always right in the middle of a contradiction, I'm okay with that, too. I am not a Christian, and hopefully I never will be, but I recognize a central fallacy of their belief system: "we are all sinners." Indeed we are, but only because the idea of "sin" and "evil" is a reality of our existence. Whether or not that even matters is another question entirely, but I refuse to get bummed out by that. Life in general is much better than the alternative, especially if it's spiced with the occasional spasms of self-indulgent behavior. And I am almost totally fueled by that, dude. After all, I currently enjoy a comfortable happy existence, in a pretty place, full of nice people—and I am supposed to feel guilty about this? I'm gonna be judged because of that? Really? Really? Now that, that is absurd. That's skipping the decline and going straight to the fall, man.

Since I want to accept chaotic absurdity, however, I'll deal. I'm not so anxious to push the reset button yet. I'm not so preoccupied with wasting my time and love and energy on the accomplishments of people I'll never meet, or with martyring myself for their immutable, pristine, and lifeless principles. I'll let that which does not matter truly slide, because the posturing bores are not worth engaging. Someone else can grapple with illogical contradictions and try to curve the sharp corners of the surrounding, resolutely square reality.

Cross-posted: dkos, dd

How Can You Have Any Pudding if You Don't Eat Your Meat?

Ye gods, the damn ungrateful brats just never stop screaming, do they? You work all day to bring home the bacon and they just turn up their noses at it. The very idea of it all, indeed! Why can't they just eat their sausages like good little children, huh? Why won't they just swallow, grin and bear it, and beg for more? Don't they understand how hard Dad busted his own ass all day to pay for this? Don't they appreciate how Mom slaved over a hot stove all night to put it on the table? I mean, really—who in their right mind would have the sheer nerve to push it away and demand their pudding? What the hell, son?

Listen you whiny little shits, I don't care how much pudding Bobby and Suzy's parents give them; hell, they could eat it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for all we know—they're hideously obese enough, aren't they? Do you want to turn out like that? Huh? Do you? No, listen to me when I'm talking to you! I will not have you insult my hard work and your mother's righteous skills with your selfish, puritanical pouting, young man. I will not allow you to treat us that way, young lady. You're going to eat that fucking sausage on your plate, and you're going to like it, or so help me I'll take off my belt right now.

I don't care what you've read in school—what the hell do your teachers know, after all? They're probably all pinko commie vegans anyway. Who does that Mr. Sinclair think he is? Who died and made him Secretary of Agriculture? Jesus, it's not like any of them have had to slog through the killing floor day after day after day, is it? No, their lives aren't awash in polluted effluvia, and they never will be, up in those shiny ivory towers. They have no idea what it takes to work for a living, raise a family, endure an office full of morons and a planet full of fools. Look at all those idiots! Look at all those boobs! Why, I'd wager they wouldn't even know ham form haggis, the smug, sneering elitists!

Dennis? Hey, are you listening to me, son? Look what you did! Look what you did! You've made your mother cry, goddamnit! You've ruined dinner all because you can't take a single solitary bite of sausage! Don't you realize that there are starving people in Africa? Hell, there are even starving people in West Virginia! People who would walk on their lips through busted glass to even get next to that sausage. People who would never in their wildest dreams believe they could sit at a table like this; live in a house on a cul-de-sac like this; leach a cushy existence in an exurb like this!

I mean, go ask any of your snotty little friends in Cub Scouts, son. I'm sure all of them eat their meat with gusto; they're all nice plump little boys, aren't they? Hell yes, just like Marcy's catty cheer camp sisterhood. They don't tolerate any of that binge and purge behavior, no sir! Come to think of it, Marcy, you look like you've lost weight, baby. How 'bout you put away some of that sausage? Put some motion in those moves, girl. Jesus, you wouldn't want those skinny chicken legs showing at halftime tomorrow night, would you? Your mother and I will be at the game, just like we promised, and if you know what's good for you you'll swallow that entire sausage whole, honey.

Look here, I'll show you—it's simple. See, you take the relish and mustard and ketchup and all those other condiments that God has seen fit to provide us, and slather them all over that big ol' kielbasa. Damn right, just like that. See, that's not so bad, is it? Is it? Good, now all you have to do is take that first bite…Go ahead, honey, we'll wait, and…and—hey, Dennis, where the hell do you think you're going? What? What's on TV? Oh Jesus, that's right! Quick, quick everyone—inhale that sausage and get your asses into the den—Top Chef is on!

Ah…now that's better, isn't it? No no, you're not green at all, darling—what, do you think we'd poison you? Never in hell—where do you think we'd be without that tax write-off? Ha! How we get our meat doesn't matter as much as us getting it in the end, does it? This is still America, kids—the Law of the Jungle is still the Law of the Land, after all. Kill or be killed. Is this a great country, or what?

Cross-posted: dkos

Birthday Cake is the Breakfast of Kings

AKA "It's That Glorious Time of Year Again, Part III." Getting up at 6 a.m. to eat birthday cake is the only reason to get up this early, but since I have now entered my Jesus Year (for the Christians out there) or my Alexander Year (for the rest of you), I've decided that the coming 12 months between #33 and #34 shall be Momentous Indeed.

Let's just say that since I don't really do New Year's Resolutions, today will have to do: by this time next year I hope to have finished my first novel in some form, complete enough to self-publish and then ignore in favor of new work with the band, which we will be knee-deep in. If that time period also includes travel to someplace I've never been before, I'll also be happy.

So if you feel the earth shake at all between now and 11/2/2010, it'll just be me walking tall and kicking ass. You're welcome.

Obligatory Thoughts on Monsters and Wild Things

Nothing complicated for this one; since it's Halloween, I thought I'd cough up one of my reheated metaphorical theories about monsters and horror and stuff. I actually hate horror movies and monster stories, but I appreciate the symbolism that many of them have. Since I've studied too much Dante and Milton, my own tendency is to attach all kinds of western Judeo-Christian stuff to monster narratives, and so I glommed on to the idea that each type of monster is a metaphor for one of the seven deadly sins. It's not a very original idea, but none of them ever really are, so I'll just list 'em:

Vampires = Lust, Zombies = Sloth, Werewolves = Wrath, Ghosts = Envy, Skeletons = Gluttony, and...and that's about as far as I get. I can't think of any undead-ish monsters that apply to Pride or Greed. Devils work well for Pride—that was Satan's original problem, after all—but they're not human/corporeal like the others are. Witches aren't really monsters either, and there are plenty of Wiccans who'd be offended by that idea anyway, so I don't include them.

That's that, except to note that these things have popped up everywhere in western literature (and every other culture, too) for thousands of years. Some interesting twists have always been involved—Victorian classics like Frankenstein's monster alluded to the hubris of science creating life (hey, there's a good one for Pride: a golem), and Dracula and vampires have always symbolized uncontrollable carnal desire—but the most interesting ones for me have been modern-ish takes: the bored, diva-tastic bloodsuckers of Anne Rice; the zombified shoppers of 1950's horror films, etc.


One problem is by creating these outsized metaphors for the most disturbing human behavior, we sort of gloss over the fact that mere humans tend to do more monstrous things than any fictional nightmare. In spite of that, I do have a few favorite monster metaphors. One of them is the werewolf character Lupin from the Harry Potter books, who has always struck me as a stand-in for an HIV-positive person. Not full-blown AIDS, but something with enough of a stigma and sting to make the simple allusion to lycanthropy work for a kids' book.


My other favorite is the Bret Easton Ellis short story collection "The Informers." Ellis, of course, famously gave us "American Psycho," but I went back to re-read "Informers" after it came out on film earlier this year to a chorus of pans. The movie had no vampires—and for a collection that was, literally, sold in Japan under the translation "Vampires and Zombies" (as an allusion to the hyperbolically active and passive freaks of 1980s Los Angeles), that was supposedly a major fatal flaw. Since I haven't actually seen the film yet, I'll refrain from judgment.


Speaking of movies, though, Em and I did belatedly catch "Where the Wild Things Are" today and, well… I don't really have anything meaningful to say about it, because I didn't really feel anything about the film one way or another. I don't know how else to describe it except by quoting the baseball writer Roger Angell, who once said something like "Whenever I went to a Yankees game, I felt like [megalomaniacal team owner] George Steinbrenner was in the way. I wanted to see Catfish Hunter and Reggie Jackson, but all I saw was Steinbrenner."

That's sort of how I feel about this movie: I wanted to see Wild Things, but all I saw was (director) Spike Jonze and (writer) Dave Eggers and their achingly hip neuroses. Now, maybe I'm too used to being manipulated and told how to feel by movies (I did just cite Harry Potter, didn't I?), but to me this "Wild Things" seemed emotionally cold and almost dead (with the exception of actress Catherine Keener). That self-consciously arch, Wes Anderson-type ennui that pollutes so many movies of the past decade had its tendrils in this one too—and it made the thing so desperate to be Meaningful and Important that it kinda turned me off. But who knows—maybe I'm not getting something, which is very likely.

Anyway, on that ugly note, happy Halloween, kiddies. Eat lots of candy and don't worry about us grumpy old people and our silly griping—it's only a metaphor for the bitter ravages of age, after all. Did I mention it's my birthday in two days?

It's That Glorious Time of Year Again, Part II

The Dubious birthday week continues, today with a nod to my sister Lis. As you can see from the photo, Lis has clearly always enjoyed spending time with her big brothers, which is surely why she now lives 500 miles away from both of us. ;-) Happy birthday Lil!

It's That Glorious Time of Year Again

Yup, it's yet another Birthday Week for the DuBois kids, and we are kicking it off in style. Today it's Bryn's turn. Everyone wish him the best, because for eight high and mighty days, his age is only one number below mine. Happy birthday bro.

Be Careful Not to Touch the Wall

Yeah Bobby, cause there's a brand-new coat of paint going on over at ye olde My Band Rocks Dot Com. Mira:





The Honey White version of the site has actually looked like this for most of 2009, but I figured it was high time to re-vamp the rest of the bands' pages over there and effectively bring them into the year 2001 with some basic, gimpy CSS. Right now they look a little bare-bones, for sure—but the plan is to (relatively soon) integrate them with a relatively agile content management system like MODx.

Also, they're pretty dependent on social media tools for content right now. Those ugly little ShareThis! buttons are on every page, the HW news is piped in via FeedBurner's RSS thingy, all photos are in Flickr slideshows, HW and Low Tide have small YouTube pages, and as always every album is streaming in the XSPF Flash players from archive.org. But it's a start.

It's also the reason I haven't been blogging about stuff for a little while, for those impatient few who've been bugging me to post something. Like Bryn. More as it develops...

Keir's Summer Yuppie Concert Series 2009

Nothing special for this one; just felt like posting other people's photos from the shows I saw this summer—Neko Case (Greek L.A., 6/12), Wilco (Greek Berkeley, 6/27), Jenny Lewis (Hollywood Bowl, 7/12), Elbow (Wiltern L.A., 7/22), and Built to Spill (Velvet Jones S.B., 8/22). Em went to the first four with me, Mom and Bill came to Wilco with us, and Bryn and I endured sloppy drunks for Built to Spill. Photos are in that order:






Being the good creative-class NPR yuppie that I am, naturally I dug every show. We were due to see Placebo rock out last weekend too, in L.A., but their singer decided he was too exhausted to tour the U.S. Maybe they'll be back. I hope so, for Emily's sake (she was not amused).

Photo credits: Neko Case by Andrew Youssef for Stereogum. Wilco's Jeff Tweedy by Hippies Are Dead. Jenny Lewis by Irfan Khan for the L.A. Times. Guy Garvey of Elbow by Youssef again, for Stereogum. Built to Spill by Paul Wellman (who actually photographed me once, too) for the S.B. Independent.

The Horrible Burden of Being Right All the Time

Some people have no idea how goddamn fragile the universe is, you know? How temporary and tenuous and genuinely frightening it is. How all things are supposed to have a purpose and a reason and a proper place and time to exist. It's an awful shame, and apparently a staggeringly difficult concept to understand in crunch time, but it's true. No, seriously—anything worth doing is worth doing right. Life requires meticulous planning, and I'm sick and tired of being mocked for my steadfast adherence to things done by the book and inside the box and according to the forever-changing rules that I myself made up.

Honest, I swear. I mean, I've thought about this stuff a lot, okay? I fucking hate it when people up and decide to be the change they wish to see, because that wasn't part of The Plan. My plan—because I'm a Serious Person, and I believe in inartful, easily-malleable shit like Facts and Reason and Logic and other soulless, sexless, reality-based stuff. Except when it it's not convenient—but hey, we can't have all that messy passion coloring everything we do, can we? We're dealing with a delicate operation here, and no one's allowed to touch the sides. That buzzer's just so fucking loud. But yeah, the quest sits perpetually upon the edge of a knife, and no one will believe how serious it is if silly damn fools keep running around shoving petitions in peoples' faces. Everything simply must be in its right place, or else we'll all be sorry.

And, really—the last thing I want to do is drive a wedge between people I like and people I don't, but man, these overzealous activists and hotshot circular firing squads are totally harshing my buzz. Seriously, you guys, let's not bicker and argue about who killed who. The President spoke! He rocked! This is supposed to be a happy occasion! I wanted to Rah Rah and Fuck Yeah and kick the party of Dumb Brutes and Rich People while they're down, and now...well, now these fucking petitions are everywhere, and I can't do that! So totally not fair, man. Not cool at all. We can't possible impose upon our erstwhile allies. That would be ever so rude. It would ruin everything.

And their insecurities are contagious, after all. Overzealous enthusiasm would frighten anyone, though, right? If we're not careful, it'll topple our little jenga-pile of painstakingly-crafted talking points and frames and alliances and deft, subtle maneuvers. So, sadly, some people need to be put in their place. Forcefully. It brings us no joy, but it must, yes must be done. Why? Because foisting our horrible burdens of rightness upon those dumb, melodramatic philistines is what we do best. They have no idea how we feel. Mocked and teased and snickered at and ignored for having the temerity to be unremittingly professional. Jesus! What's the world coming to?

So yeah, this is how it's gonna have to be, because we said so, and lots of important people agree with us. That's right, son—don't you forget it. Don't you realize we've already considered and dismissed your childish concerns? Can't you see us tearing our hair? Can't you feel us wring our own necks in righteous rage? Can't you sense the humor and absurdity being sucked right out of our normal little souls by those clumsy, grasping amateurs? Cause if you can't, well…then you deserve every sociopathic sneer that will hit you. It'll be withering. You'll feel so dumb and worthless that you won't want to do anything at all! Eat that bowl of condescension, dude. Eat it raw, or no pudding for you. How can you have any ponies if you don't eat your shit?

Because your parents slaved over this shit, son. We're so totally more the legit activists than those other posturing wankers. Oh sure, yesterday it was activism, but then it became embarrassingly popular, and so today we've decided that they're doing it all wrong and deemed them a circular firing squad. We know what's best for you, and you better appreciate it. Hell, we're gonna MAKE you appreciate it, because no one's appreciated us. No one's even acknowledged the days and weeks and months and years we've spent mucking around the unknowing, unfeeling void. Other people gave up and fucked off, but did we ever falter? NO. We FOLLOWED THE RULES, and continued to, long long long after the Great Eye had looked beyond to focus on other, worthier things. It was our perogative, baby. Our right.

So don't give me that bong-shattering bollocks about "nuh-uh" and "whatevs" and "nyah nyah WE TOLD YOU SO" and "everything sucks worse than it's ever sucked before." We are HIGH on GLORY and TRANSCENDENCE right now, and shiny objects are for losers. Losers, I say. Now pass me that mojo and let's go bitch-slap some Naderites. Hell yes! Go! Fight! Stomp the buggers! Twist some progressive titties! Kick Sirota in the balls! The White House Chief of Staff didn't order it, but we know he totally would have, and you know what that means.

And another thing—for the love of Humphrey, please don't get paid to blog. That's making us look bad. That will just curdle our envious little souls, and we'll have to stomp your reputation into the slimy gutter. Hell hath no fucking fury like a scorned, under-appreciated Earnest Liberal with the temerity to work for free. Anyone who doesn't is just a paid shill or "failed movie producer" trying to build their fake reputation. Oh sure, they say they care about the issue, but their methods are, like, absolutely uncool, and all the suckers who are falling for their act are just the dumb unwashed ignorant masses anyway. I mean, was Nirvana cool when they single-handedly killed hair metal?

No. Hell no. We own every county fair stage and Sunset dive bar, so fuck them. We're taking them out. Yeah, time to give 'em a bath. Wash behind the ears. Git 'em soap flakes in the cracks. Lather-rinse-repeat. Humiliate the uppity little punks. Don't make me come down there. I'm going to scrub my snide sense of professional arrogance into you until your skin runs red with the rashes of the cynical, until it wrinkles raw with the ruthless scabs of compromise. And you'll learn to like it. Trust me, I speak from eminent experience. Hold still, little shill. This won't hurt a bit, but you will learn to live with it.

Cross-posted: dkos

Requiem for a Music Geek: All of This Has Happened Before

The ongoing cycle of death and rebirth may be one of life's only truths, but that doesn't make it any more fun to write about. See, usually Truth can be a shockingly powerful weapon—even a deadly one, in the hands of the righteous and insane—albeit one so final that it obliterates all the pissy little details that writers love to obsess over, and sucking the truth out of anything usually demands huge swaths of time, with often little reward for such massive emotional-temporal investment. That's a massively pompous thing to barf up on this Labor Day weekend, but remember that we're now looking down the barrel of Fall, the season when things begin to die, and contemplative rumination becomes all the rage as we each hoard our little harvests of sanity.

Good things take time, after all, so maybe it's understandable that it took me this long—six months or so—to squeeze out any semi-coherent thoughts about droll things like rock & roll albums by bands I used to really, really like. Specifically, U2's twelfth platter No Line on the Horizon, belatedly released this past March amid a carpet-bombing of promotional appearances by the Rich Irish Dorks in question. Obviously, U2's pretty popular on our little planet, so everyone and their dog felt compelled to weigh in on the merits—or lack thereof—attached to this thing, deluging us all in the depressing idiocy of both good and bad reviews.

Flaccid yawns erupted from planet Pitchfork, and over-the-top fellatio dribbled in from Rolling Stone, Q, and other points mainstream. The haters took yet another opportunity to lob their pathetically harmless envy-bombs, and the insecure fanatics once again leapt to defend their heroes at the slightest criticism. The band themselves swaggered into places like the Ed Sullivan Theater and the BBC studios, calmly and professionally dispatching the new tunes with the skills of (nearly) fifty-year-old road warriors, and there was much to pontificate about.

So I figured it would be a far, far better thing to just sit on this thing until the craziness blew over and U2 were set to hit these American shores with their monstrous "360" tour before strapping on that rusty old rock-critic juvenilia yet again and blathering on about the creativity of people I'll never meet. Yeah, let the thing ferment a while and kill off my initial hateful impulses, or see if they would simply wither on their own. However, all the baggage that goes into a U2 album these days is damn near unavoidable—for them as well as the rest of us—so now's as good a time as any to tackle No Line with the requisite revisionistic re-appraisal I love to foist on other people's creations.

The quick verdict—for those of you already rolling your eyes and clicking away—is that I actually do like the thing, and much more so than its immediate predecessors (2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind and 2004's How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb), two stumbling, neo-classical behemoths that rival the Ptolemies in backward-grasping bombast. Yes, I like No Line, but I've found that I like it but mostly because it reminds me of other—better—music they've already made. That's a wretched thing to say, but unfortunately it's the truth. How can it not be, with the Eno/Lanois/Lillywhite Axis of Pomp back on board? Does U2 genuinely not know how to work well with anyone else? Do they even need to know that?

Ah, who cares. The new album is in that regrettable decade-ending position of U2's other supposed gaffes, 1988's Rattle and Hum and 1997's Pop; like those, it's received a lazy, schizoid reception of ecstatic adulation, shrugging sneers, and slavering hatred. It deserves none of those things, but U2's post-1998 history of abject banality had already heavily weighted my own personal scales, so everything you read in this column is already hopelessly biased. I've had lots of time to listen to it, but other than the usual silly subjective bullshit, the most I can say is that this album merely confirms how much U2 borrows from themselves with every new recording. They do not, contrary to wisdom, "reinvent" themselves every time. They merely offer up a different spin on the same old things they've always been good at: huge, vaguely-meaningful anthems on love and faith.

Take the opening title track, for example: a song I immediately enjoyed precisely because it's the incestuous spawn of two older songs I already love ("The Fly" and "Ultraviolet," both from Achtung Baby). Does it matter that I was effortlessly manipulated by the song's flagrant inbreeding—which was so strong that "No Line" was left without a chorus? Not really—Bono's gloriously wordless hollering in the verse more than makes up for that. The similarities to previous works don't stop there, though—they only intensify. Adam Clayton saunters to the front on "Magnificent," a matronly and graceful update of "Mysterious Ways," as if the female belly-dancing deity in the lyric has aged 18 years, had three kids, and put on about 40 pounds, but can still shake it on the weekend.

And that, folks, is where the album peaks for me—those two songs. Well, there is one other high point, but we'll get to that later. After "Magnificent," No Line lurches between sluggish ballads (which nevertheless contain good Edge guitar work) and overcompensatory rockers for most of its remaining length. "Moment of Surrender" is ruined right away by Bono's singing—he crashes through the window at full volume, when he should have eased into, and built up to, the kind of climax this seven-minute monster demands. The colossal stupidity of everything about "Get On Your Boots" (the execrable first single) helps obscure the mere dumbness of "Stand Up Comedy" and "I'll Go Crazy if I Don't Go Crazy Tonight," but this shit sandwich in the album's mushy middle very nearly croaks the whole thing. It's a terrible, terrible sequence—no matter how much your toes tap—and no amount of dissembling from Bono ("we were trying to do an Eagles of Death Metal song!" or "people bitched about 'The Fly' like this too!") can save it. But except for those tinkly bells in the weak chorus, "Boots" is irredeemably bad. I once called it "a monstrously half-assed jalopy of suck," and "worse than 'Beautiful Day' or even the depths of 'Vertigo'," and I stand by that insult. It absolutely deserves it—the music sucks and the lyric is stupid. I can't believe Larry Mullen let this one out of the barn.

Speaking of lyrics, well, that's another near-fatal flaw on this album. Much has been made of Bono's supposed writing in character for No Line. The problem is he never even got halfway there. These things aren't alternate points of view; they're clumsy, amateur stabs at skills he's never had. Bono is great at first-person narrative metaphors, but by explicitly claiming these are stories he injects an aura of craftsmanship into them that as a lyricist he frankly has not possessed for over a decade (and then only fleetingly so). The one glorious exception, full of (relatively) energetic wonder, is a stone cold killer line from Track 10, "Breathe" ("I'm running down the road like loose electricity/while the band in my head plays a strip-tease"), but that single blast of genius is quickly smothered by the weight of all the surrounding half-assed lyrical effort, and is a nasty reminder of how long it's been since Bono was writing from a genuine place of inspiration and the metaphors came with every Biblical turn of the page.

That's another thing: for all the vaunted out-front religiosity of this disc, its sentiments are much more plastic than the genuinely subversive faith U2 displayed on the supposedly piss-poor Pop album. God seems less real on some of these songs than on any other U2 disc (the watered-down matriarchal worship in "Magnificent," the sluggish, boring exorcism that is "Moment of Surrender," the flat-out failed sci-fi surrealism of "Unknown Caller"). There is indeed a palpable aura of holy-fool seeking in the music, which seems to be an equal-parts distillation of October-era sonic babbling and Unforgettable Fire-like ambient atmosphere topped off by some disjointed Pop-isms—but it's consistently sabotaged by the same laughably awkward mistakes we've come to expect from this band. Now, they obviously don't care, so why should I? It's pretty cool that the same four jokers are still together making music after all this time, even if it's a relatively transparent echo of past glory.

So yeah, I spun it a lot when it was released, and probably will continue to as the tour crosses the continent, but six months later, the only songs I still really want to play from this album are "No Line on the Horizon," "Magnificent," the amplified sketchbook of "Fez/Being Born," and "Breathe." Those are the four keepers for me—the same amount as that from both previous albums ("Walk On," "Kite," "City of Blinding Lights," and "Fast Cars"). For this bitchy little fanboy, U2 has finally arrived at its own Big Crunch. Their sonic universe has collapsed in upon itself in a frantic re-arranging of matter and energy not seen since the Rolling Stones dropped Steel Wheels twenty years ago. Sure, U2 has been doing this for their whole career, but in the last decade of neo-classical revisionism their volatile recycling act has seemed its most ham-fisted and blatant, and I'm sure other people will love it much more than I do. Which is perfectly fine, as long as they recognize—and remember—that all of this has happened before and, thanks to dumb, castrated plagiarists like Coldplay, all of it will surely happen again.