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**U2 - Songs Of Innocence**
★★★☆☆

Ten years is a long time in rock and roll, but for U2, the decade between 2004's *How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb* and 2014's *Songs Of Innocence* felt like an eternity spent wandering in the commercial wilderness. While Bono was busy saving the world and Edge was tinkering with Spider-Man musicals, their faithful fanbase wondered if the Dublin quartet had anything left in the tank. The answer, as it turns out, is a qualified yes – though it came wrapped in one of the most spectacularly misjudged marketing campaigns in music history.

The album's origins trace back to U2's collaboration with producer Danger Mouse, the genre-hopping mastermind behind The Grey Album and Gnarls Barkley. Sessions began in 2013, with the band deliberately seeking to strip away the bombast that had increasingly defined their sound since the '90s. The concept was personal: a reflection on their Dublin youth, the friendships that shaped them, and the wide-eyed optimism that launched four teenagers from the Northside into rock immortality. Bono described it as the first part of a diptych exploring innocence and experience – Blake's eternal themes filtered through the lens of middle-aged millionaires trying to reconnect with their inner punks.

Musically, *Songs Of Innocence* finds U2 attempting something approaching restraint, though old habits die hard. The production is cleaner and more focused than their previous efforts, with Danger Mouse reining in their tendency toward cathedral-sized arrangements. There's a deliberate nod to their post-punk origins, particularly on tracks like "Raised By Wolves," which tackles the 1974 Dublin bombings with the kind of righteous fury that once made them essential listening. Edge's guitar work is more textured than it's been in years, trading delay-pedal histrionics for actual riffs, while Adam Clayton and Larry Mullen Jr. lock into grooves that recall their *War*-era chemistry.

The album's standout moments arrive when U2 stop trying so hard to be U2. "Song For Someone" strips away the grandstanding for an intimate love letter that ranks among Bono's most affecting vocal performances, his voice cracking with genuine emotion over a delicate acoustic arrangement. "The Troubles," featuring Lykke Li's ghostly harmonies, builds from whispered confessions to a genuinely moving meditation on Northern Ireland's bloody history. Meanwhile, "Cedarwood Road" – named after Bono's childhood street – pulses with the kind of yearning that made "I Will Follow" so compelling three decades earlier.

Less successful are the moments when the band slips back into autopilot. "Every Breaking Wave" aims for anthemic but lands somewhere around generic, while "Sleep Like A Baby Tonight" mistakes volume for intensity. The album's biggest misstep might be "This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now," a clunky attempt at contemporary relevance that sounds like a focus group's idea of what U2 should sound like in 2014.

Of course, discussing *Songs Of Innocence* purely as music misses the elephant in the room: Apple's decision to automatically download the album to every iTunes account on the planet. The backlash was swift and merciless, with privacy advocates and music fans alike expressing outrage at having U2 forced upon them. Suddenly, the band found themselves apologizing for giving away their music for free – a surreal twist that overshadowed any artistic merits the album possessed.

The controversy revealed something troubling about U2's relationship with their audience. Once beloved as scrappy underdogs taking on the establishment, they had become the establishment – corporate rock stars so removed from reality that they couldn't understand why people might resent having their choices made for them. The incident crystallized a growing sense that U2 had lost touch with the very innocence they were attempting to recapture.

A decade on, *Songs Of Innocence* feels like a missed opportunity. Stripped of its promotional baggage, it's a solid if unremarkable addition to U2's catalog – their most listenable album in years, even if it rarely approaches essential. The tragedy is that the music itself was largely lost in the noise, leaving us to wonder what might have been if they'd simply trusted their songs to find their own audience. Sometimes the most innocent approach is also the wisest.