U2 surrender to the passing of time, 100 gecs run amok – the week’s best albums

U2, Songs of Surrender ★★★★☆

Are U2 ready to wave the white flag and give up bragging rights to be the greatest rock band in the world? The Irish quartet have been a vital force for over 40 years, from sparky new wave crusaders to imperial giants of sci-fi stadium rock. But here they are, all in their 60s, breaking out acoustic guitars, dropping keys and tempos for Songs of Surrender, an album where even the initials might imply a cry for help.

SOS is billed as U2’s 15th studio album, yet does not actually feature any new songs. Rather, it is made up of re-recorded (or in marketing parlance “re-imagined”) versions of 40 tracks spanning U2’s career, a mixture of hits and signature anthems (Pride, One, Beautiful Day, Vertigo) with off-beat selections including a beautifully sombre reading of 1995 ballad If God Will Send His Angels and 2014’s The Miracle (of Joey Ramone) revitalized with a jazzy swing built for cocktail bars rather than stadiums.

Age catches up with everybody in the end, even leather-trousered rock stars. Sixty-two-year-old frontman Bono’s recent autobiography was also titled Surrender, and opened with an account of heart surgery that saved his life in 2016. Stripped down for voice and cello, Dirty Day from 1993’s Zooropa becomes a cracked rumination on mortality, so that when Bono whispers about how “days run away like horses over the hill” you wonder if he is reflecting on his own shrinking horizons?

Back when the song was composed, Bono was 34 and addressing his own distant father. Thirty years on, Bono himself might embody that father figure fretting about the passage of time, while his own son, Eli Hewson, leads out thrilling young rock combo Inhaler. “You can hold onto something so tight, you’ve already lost it,” Bono growls. It is such altered perspectives that make this measured, inventive, introspective collection so compelling, as U2 turn their own songs inside out in search of new nuances and meanings.

SOS was conjured up during pandemic lockdown by the band’s gifted multi-instrumentalist The Edge. Erasing the muscular power of an amplified rock combo, Edge explores ways to let other elements shine. In particular, the focus is on Bono’s older yet still powerful voice, devoid of posturing and mannerisms, really digging into meaning and melody. The subtle rumble of Adam Clayton’s bass and tastefully executed percussion from Larry Mullen Jr make themselves felt in all the right places, with full band arrangements breathing new life into a smattering of undernourished songs, including a brass band version of 1998’ Red Hill Mining Town and an REM-ish strum through 1991’s Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses.

Casual listeners might question the point of U2 without Edge’s guitar attack and Bono’s roof-raising roar? The answer, I suspect, has a lot to do with the way we listen to music now, in streaming playlists to suit different moods. SOS attempts to meet today’s listeners where they are by offering the option of U2 chill out. Should you hanker for the impact of a fearsome rock band in full flight, well, the original recordings still exist in all their glory.

Nevertheless, in our youth-centric pop culture, unplugging could be depicted as a defeat. But then you hear Bono’s tender delivery of 2004’s Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own, really landing this overlooked lament for a deceased parent with one of the most moving vocals of his career. Done so thoughtfully, such surrender to the imperatives of age might better be considered an act of grace. Neil McCormick

100 gecs, 10,000 gecs ★★★☆☆

In the process of making the follow-up to their 2019 surprise breakout album, 1,000 gecs, Missouri hyperpop duo 100 gecs claim to have demoed at least 6,000 songs and ideas, before chucking almost all of them out and settling on the 10 they present here. It says much about this curious outfit, not least why it’s taken four years to release an album originally announced for 2021.

One imagines the long process wasn’t down to an awareness that the project they started for a laugh now gets streamed two million times a month, but that those 6,000 other ideas weren’t out-there enough. The pair – Laura Les and Dylan Brady, who produces for Charli XCX and Rico Nasty – don’t sound or operate like other bands. Quite probably, they couldn’t if they actually wanted to. Their sound is a lurid, bleepy, scratchy explosion of brightly-coloured pop-punk melodies, glitchy electronics, digitally augmented vocals and clutches of EDM beats that often feel like you need to run to keep up. It’s Blink-182 remixed by Skrillex, SOPHIE mashed up with The Offspring.

Despite this, and its title, 10,000 gecs doesn’t raise the intensity of its predecessor by a factor of 10. It’s still a uniquely wild ride, though. On the beyond auto-tuned raps of Dumbest Girl Alive and the giddy, cutesy pop rush of 757, they manage to overload on the electronics while remaining oddly alluring. It’s a similar story on the sugar-high LA story of Hollywood Baby, while Mememe is wrapped up in an imaginary eight-bit video game soundtrack to brilliant effect.

Amid these highs, though, 100 gecs can also be (perhaps willfully) irritating. One Million Dollars, with its sampled repetition of its title, or the Casio keyboard nursery rhyme Frog On The Floor demonstrate the importance of getting this sort of thing right. Meanwhile, I Got My Tooth Removed’s rush of ska punk, while a welcome surprise at first, doesn’t fly with the best of what’s here.

At their strongest, though – as on punky standout Doritos And Fritos – 10,000 gecs is a wonderful exercise in letting creativity run amok with no rules at all and carefully catching the resultant gold. God alone knows what the inevitable 100,000 gecs is going to sound like. Nick Ruskell

Black Honey, Fistful of Peaches ★★★☆☆

Brighton's Black Honey forgo sweetness in favour of snarling, serrated riffs on their third album Fistful of Peaches. Fans of the quartet's self-titled 2018 debut and their popular 2021 follow-up Written & Directed know the terrain. The atmosphere is all fuzzy cascades of riffs, chugging bass, and twining melodies. You've heard this before from every indie rock band since 1989, probably. The guiding force is the stormy, sullen siren Izzy Bee Phillips, and she is something special.

Careening from kittenish, curdling croons (Up Against It) to a more breezy and melancholic sound (Out of My Mind), Phillips is several steps ahead of critics trying to pigeonhole her. The throbbing bass of Rock Bottom is like a coiled serpent: full of malice, seemingly safe until you get close enough to really hear it.

Phillips' experiences of hallucinations, dissociation, ADHD and intensive therapy have opened a window and allowed her to breathe anew and the warm, pop-infused sonic sunbeams on Cut The Cord suggest a transient, tentative hopefulness. The gothic, cinematic lushness of Written & Directed signalled a band capable of jazzy, soulful vocal power and stadium-ready, driving rock, but Fistful of Peaches delivers a lot of juice and too little flesh.

Like Paramore Lite, the first half of this album bubbles and fizzes in a pleasing sugar-hit without delivering true satiety. Then you strike gold, so stick around. The tumble and clash of melodies and layered harmonies soaked in reverb and wailing guitar on I’m A Man show off the sort of adventurous versatility that Black Honey are truly capable of when they stop trying to nail a clean, pop chorus and head into unmapped wilderness. Nobody Knows is a strumming, lachrymose tambourine-shimmer paean to the bleakest shadows of who we are, the stories we don’t tell. If only the band had dared to follow this direction more consistently and thoroughly, it could have been stellar. Cat Woods