This one's called 'Outlaw'

For me, there's something about waking up to a new U2 song that is kind of unfortunately like Christmas morning. I say "unfortunately" because, where I come from, Christmas morning is always a serious coin-flip as to if what's under the tree reeks of whiskey or Wal-Mart lay-away. The former would indicate something last-minute, thrown together and ultimately far more expensive (guilt may be a useless emotion but, in terms of gifts from my family it has proven to be both a powerful force and a wonderful thing), whereas the latter would indicate something planned and sensible-like a blanket, socks, or a bag of cheese-puffs. Not crunchy Cheetos, no-to wake up on Christmas morning to a bag of the slender, thin, snap-crackle-pop-in-your-mouth with neon-orange-cheeze-ee-goodness wrapped ever-so-haphazardly would indicate that one or both of my parents actually had any idea what my preferences for super-fattening fake cheese snack products were. Instead, I'd wake up to either a $20 Target gift card smelling like pot smoke and cheap booze or a bag of thrift-store-brand Cheesy Puffs. You know, the super-rotund air-puffed kind that spread their Crayola "Orange Peel"-colored jizzm over fingers and counter tops and clothing without any taste ever actually being imparted into the mouth of the consumer.

The. Worst. Kind. Of. Cheese. Puffs.



A new U2 song, particularly the first song released from an as-yet-unheard new album, falls exactly into that dichotomy of afore-stated Christmas potential: it's either going to be quick and useful or...or, well, gift-wrapped 99-cent Cheese Puffs.

I'm not the world's biggest U2 fan. I'm not going to write a Matthew Perpetua-esque dissertation on "Joshing The Joshua Tree: Bono's Myriad Voices Throughout The Ages". I don't know art but I know what sort of bombastic grandiosity I like, and I don't know much but I know I love Bono and I tend to let that be all there is to know. That said? Achtung, Baby, with the impeccable Brian Eno production, the lush musical textures and Bono's wry, cutting, sarcastic, sadistic love-lorn lyrics, is one of my favorite albums ever. The rest of U2's output I can take or leave, and I tend to cherrypick through all of it. For instance, the pretty-much-universally-hated POP album has its moments, and for my musical dollar (aka free, downloaded via Soulseek...erm, um, I mean I SUPPORTMUSICIBUYWHATILIKE or something like that)they are more plentiful then the obligatory millennium "Return To Form" record that was All That You Can't Leave Behind. What both of those albums have in common, though, is that their first singles were these giant, massive, explosive, world-affirming (well, ok, "This-Is-Bono's-World" affirming) statements of shapeless, boundless, formless platitudes like Hope and Trust and Faith and Woo-Hoo and Hey-Yeah and Change and Love and All Right All Right and other similar big ideas.

That's why this new U2 single, "Strap Your Momma To Ireland" or whatever it's called, is such an insane disappointment. It's not just that the guitar riff unfortunately conjures thoughts of lost 90's flannel-rockers Collective Soul (and let's be honest there, there is no way to conjure thoughts of Collective Soul that can be deemed "fortunate"), or that Bono's vocal pacing pretty much splits the embarrassing difference between Madonna's rap about shopping at Fresh Market and using non-dairy creamer on "American Life" and, well, and the ENTIRETY of Escape Club's "Wild Wild West". It's the fact that there is not a moment in this song in which Bono reminds us-you, me, the world, HIS world long live the King may his name be praised and worshiped and glorified-reminds us of, ya know, Hope. Faith. Love. Art. Any of those big-ticket items.

It's like that moment in American Psycho when Pat Bateman finds religion via Bono at a U2 concert, and immediately shuts down and rejects everything he's been filled with. U2 is meant to be stupidly uplifting, unjustifiably inspiring, full of platitudes unfettered by longitude or latitude. U2, the musical collective hivemind of the Edge, Bono, and those other two dudes with the glasses who did the song for that Tom Cruise movie, are supposed to function as a mirror to the world's collective souls, not sound LIKE Collective Soul (oh, schnap! Yes! HIGH FIVE, RUSS, HIGH FIVE!). If the first single can be said to operate as a new album's harbinger, the Silver Surfer to the Galactus that is the forthcoming U2 record, which will inevitably be titled Bono Sings! For You or Segways In The Garden Of Allah , then this...this...this new song indicates that any following album certainly will not rattle, and it most assuredly will not hum. This is going to be less a booze-scented gift card to somewhere and more a hastily-wrapped bag of convenience store junkfood.

If only one good thing comes from the release of a new CD from Bono & Co (which sounds like the best Sunday morning political talk-show ever, co-starring Rachel Maddow, yes please), it will be the fact that my friend Jill, the originator and maintainer of the Bono Photoshop blog, will be forced into further creative action. She is truly an artist of the highest caliber.


(from Jill's Bono Photoshop blog)

Frankly, I'm kind of pulling for a photoshop of Bono in a bag of Cheese Puffs. The big, fat, air-filled kind. Gift-wrapped. Under a Christmas Tree. Because frankly that's what this sounds like.
Continued...

It's comin' on Christmas. They're cuttin' down trees...

You know, it's sad when you wake up alone on Christmas morning wishing you'd joined your friends for an early-a.m. Waffle House breakfast ambush, despite how your random upper respiratory tract infection-snacking has been impacting your body image, simply because you need to hear the half-toothed waitresses (waitressi?) call you "honey" and feign affection.

Truth be told it's not like I can spend the money-I can't. Seriously, three dollars for hash browns? You must be mistaking me for a pre-recession Russ. A Russ unconcerned with where his next paycheck's coming from (if from anywhere indeed). But I guess in a fashion akin to that used-up literary throwback of Holden Caulfield paying the hooker to talk to him (or not paying, really), I'd be willing to throw down for something warm, tasty, filling and greasy as hell if it's accompanied by a side-helping of someone pretending to care that, this Christmas, the only friend I really have is Joni Fucking Mitchell.


It's not like I listen to that much folk music in general, or much Joni Mitchell in particular, but Blue is an album that is intricately, almost synaesthetically, linked, for me, to winter. I had long conversations with that album cover yesterday, the first day of this year that I've actually listened to it straight through. Blue is the epitome of the sad, mournful holiday album, despite the fact that it affects a certain sort of almost-embarrassingly humble folky groove a little way through (see: "Carey"). Even the more upbeat moments, like "All I Want", mask a serious longing.

"I am on a lonely road and I am traveling
Looking for the key to set me free
Oh the jealousy, the greed is the unraveling
Its the unraveling
And it undoes all the joy that could be"

This album is, I guess, this year, the Christmas present to myself to cap off a year where everything has changed. But then, it's the same present I give myself every year about this time. I always talk about Blue as a use-once-and-destroy album, and maybe what I mean is that, as opposed to being a throw-away album, it's the sort of record that I can only listen to during this time of the year. When there's no family to reach out to, no tree no lights nothing really? There's this record. This is the record that starts playing inside my head when the box of useless junk my mother sent to my work address because it's the only way she knows how to get in touch with me anymore arrives, and I have to bite my nails to the quick (which, these days, given how withered and brittle I've left my cuticles, doesn't take much) before finally deciding to open the package-boxed, of course, in a left-over industrial-sized box of napkins no doubt acquired from her job as a waitress or hostess at a cafeteria-style restaurant somewhere...I wouldn't know. I can't tell you the last time we've spoken.

Blue is too much red wine and a headache, it's cinnamon-scented coffee and waking up in the throws of a fever and peppermint tea and it's really the only way I know to spend the winter: me and this record. I don't actually own a copy of it for more than two or three months out of the year-there's no point for me, honestly. It's like wearing a wool sweater in the summer, or baking gingerbread cookies at Easter, or vacuuming to celebrate a birthday. Blue, for me, any time other than the long stretch of gray lonely that is the winter months , is completely anachronistic.

I understand why "River" gets cherry-picked for everyone's holiday compilations (though I don't understand how it ends up on, like, the Starbuxxx Super Merry Mega Happy Save Now Sale-A-Thon-For-Christ Compilation 8!!!!!, it's such a suicide song), but really the entirety of Blue is about a year ending, making resolutions, and longing for that which can't be had-which, frankly, is my schema for Christmas. Even the songs that should be totally dismissible, like "This Flight Tonight", come with forlorn gems in the middle:

"Sometimes I think love is just mythical
Up there's a heaven
Down there's a town
Blackness everywhere and little lights shine
Oh, blackness, blackness dragging me down
Come on light the candle in this poor heart of mine"

Anyway. I shouldn't still be sitting here, in my pajamas, with the Disney Parade or whatever the hell the network stations are showing on Christmas for families to have on in the background while they squeal with glee and smile over tea as presents are unwrapped and good will and joy and cheer and all that crap is spread around, on mute, choosing instead to have Joni sing to me about how she's so hard to handle because she's selfish and she's sad. There's a lukewarm Southern Christmas Wonderland outside, of closed shops and damp puddles and temperatures akin to early fall.

This is what I know of Christmas.

"Just before our love got lost you said
'I am as constant as a northern star'
And I said, 'Constantly in the darkness
Where's that at?
If you want me I'll be in the bar'"

Joni Mitchell never lies.

Continued...