No Surrender

U2's Songs of Surrender and Neil Young's Somewhere Under the Rainbow

The promise: Here comes something epic.

From a placid meditation-hour drone rises a precisely latticed and rhythmically exacting guitar chime. From there, U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name” swells up into one of those unforgettable and galvanic rock and roll moments. By the time Bono issues the opening declaration – “I want to run” – the listener has already been swept into the mighty rushing current of the song, propelled not just by words or musical devices but by some combination of forces wound together by the X-factor known as human fervor.

Hold that cinematic opening, which lasts nearly 2 minutes, in your mind. Do not let go of it and don’t let anyone take it from you. Recognize its uniqueness, its place in the rock canon (and really all of popular music) as a singularity. Then decide: Do you want that memory messed with? Because the re-imagined version on the latest U2 offering, the too-aptly named Songs of Surrender, is another experience entirely.

The intro is whatever – more somber, less throttle. And this time Bono sings his first line like he’s just coming awake from a bender. Forget about wanting to run – he sounds for all the world like he can’t get out of bed. He is weary, oh so weary. Weighted, perhaps, by the existential troubles he expressed so succinctly on the original, but also by the task of singing at all, taking in enough air to make sound.

This one line vocal performance tells all you need to know about the jank, punishingly long Songs of Surrender – conceived as a way to recast and re-invent U2 songs (both hits and deep album cuts) as more intimate endeavors. As Edge told the Daily Telegraph, the goal was to make U2 music sound “as if Bono was singing in your ear.”

Trouble is, the proximity doesn’t always flatter. No matter how much delicate finery surrounds him, Bono is not a crooner. He’s got, like, one nuance gear, and it wears out fast because he doesn’t always trust silence and shadow. Changing the scale of the rousing songs of The Joshua Tree (and more recent efforts like Songs of Experience) somehow diminishes them. These overly mannered renditions desperately miss the zealous thunder (or was it bluster?) that magnetized millions to U2.

What, exactly, does one surrender by listening to this revisionist catalog exercise? Not just a chunk of time but also some aspects of sensory memory – the sounds of that introduction stoke an almost physical reaction, the alchemical anticipation of resonances that will soon unfold. Something similar can happen with the words, which might hit you differently as your awareness changes. Or as the world changes.

Of course, it’s entirely U2’s prerogative to mess with these works and the memories attached to them; they own the original recipes. But the execution of Songs of Surrender – the musical timidity of it – prompts questions. Is a megastar act served at all by redoing songs from albums that are cherished by millions? (Taylor Swift had good business reasons for doing it, at least.)

What’s the best way for a band like U2 to maintain audience engagement between new releases? (This set comes with its own galaxy of marketing tie-ins, from Bono’s memoir to a Las Vegas residency that reportedly won’t include founding drummer Larry Mullen Jr.).

Is it better to haul out outtakes and blurry live recordings of little-known songs than serve up Songs of Surrender-style high gloss reheats?

Neil Young’s recent endeavors offer one answer.

The legendary singer, songwriter and guitarist put out several albums of vibrant (if not uniformly sparkling) new material last year; last week he followed those with two recordings from the mid-70s plucked from his extensive archives. Somewhere Under the Rainbow  marks the official release of an often-bootlegged performance from London’s Rainbow Theater in November 1973 – just after work on Tonight’s The Night was completed but before its release.

This recording is as blurry and boomy as it was as a bootleg, but it catches a fascinating moment in Young history: Leading a band that includes steel guitarist Ben Keith, multi-instrumentalist Nils Lofgrin (of E Street Band fame) and members of Crazy Horse, Young chases loose, improvisation-tinged rambles that roam freely between rock and country and folk. Knowing now where he went subsequently, this sounds like a prototype: It anticipates the gnarl and the bite of peak Crazy Horse, while incorporating the graceful, plaintive vocal harmonies of Young’s more acoustic later elegies. The band was short-lived but the sounds it made became the mulch for subsequent Young projects.

Also short-lived was the group called The Ducks, a four-piece collaborative that performed for a few months in Southern California in 1977. High Flyin’ is not exactly high fidelity, but the spirit of its moment comes through loud and clear. Young has said that he liked the Ducks because he could just relax and play; he didn’t have to be the rock star frontperson on every song. The others involved – bassist Bob Mosley (Moby Grape) and guitarist  Jeff Blackburn – handled lead singing duties part of the time, and worked to frame the short solo excursions – among them the visceral hot-wired leads on “Mr. Soul” and “Little Wing.”

People ask why rock critics write about artists like Neil Young constantly. These titles offer one answer: This guy understands his music and his audience, knows it when he hears something interesting he made decades ago. These proudly flawed titles capture moments of belief and conviction that expand understanding of his path. They’re not aimed at those who want the Neil Young hits – they’re for the deep-dive folks, those who have followed every turn in Young’s long road, from the simple pop hits like “Helpless” to the sometimes tortured and sprawling vision-quest jams.

As listening experiences, they wind up being infinitely richer than the plodding, predictable U2 recreations. Some of that can be attributed to the degree of improvisation Young courts and U2 largely avoids. Still, the archival material sheds light on a pivotal moment in Young’s career, during a period of self-examination and creative expansion. These archive releases argue, pointedly, that the so-called “ditch” period also included moments of sublime music-making.

The members of U2 are clearly in a moment of existential self-examination right now. They could learn something from Young’s warts-and-all approach to the back pages.