I’ll get right to the point: this album stinks! It reeks like the bloated and putrid corpse of The Fly, Bono’s leather-bound, sunglasses-sporting alter-ego who strutted across many a Zoo TV stage 20 years ago before he got too fat and old to give a shit anymore and eventually overdosed on booze and molly while parked on the can in some squat in Hollywood. And I’m not being lackadaisical in my blunt critique just for the sake of churning out some honeyed BS like every other dog and his mother on how U2 has once again defied the laws of gravity with yet another pile of imaginative bunk that’s state-of-the-art and hits close to home in ways unanticipated. No way. Songs of Innocence (Island Records), which is the group’s first studio release in nearly six years and features production duties from the likes of Danger Mouse, Paul Epworth and Flood, is as bland and directionless as the last three albums that preceded it. It’s the sound of Bono and company returning from the dead in hopes of seizing the world over only to discover that they’ve become geezers competing for purpose and reason in a pop-rock industry that the band members themselves had a hand in fabricating decades ago. I don’t think I can be any more forthcoming in blurting out my disdain and ridicule of this obnoxious, queasy attempt by U2 to shed some skin and return to their boyhood days for artistic illumination. Uh-uh, ain’t happening. Then again…

Perhaps viewed by countless interviewers as a modern-day pundit with which the mainstream can identify, Bono has sprung up in just about every documentary of the last 30 years or so to traipse through the long and winding annals of rock & roll history. He has spoke of punk’s raw, purgative imbalance and its take-no-prisoners approach to decimating the souls of the willing masses who stepped up to the plate. Along the way, he’s name-dropped Bowie and Iggy and Lou while underscoring the exploits of Patti Smith and Joy Division. You almost want to believe him. But then out of nowhere comes this recent press event hosted by Apple Inc., where U2 announced its intentions to infiltrate the iTunes account of 500 million users with this freebie to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the pair’s revolutionary iPod commercial. You were more or less getting this album whether you dug U2 or not.

With Innocence, Bono has once again slunk back into his role as punk rock ambassador, revealing (post-Apple orgy) how the 11-track download features the band’s most personal material to date, touching upon themes of car bombs (“Cedarwood Road”) and death (“Iris (Hold Me Close)”) while also delivering the memo that the Ramones and The Clash are two of the most iconic bands to have ever existed (duh). On “The Miracle (of Joey Ramone),” Bono revisits his days of dream-chasing upon Dublin streets, before awakening “at the moment when the miracle occurred” when he “heard a song that made some sense out of the world.” In the PDF liner notes that accompany the album, Bono professes his undying love for the music of the Ramones and tells how he and his bandmates sneaked into a club one night in the late ’70s to witness the band and how Joey’s “girly” voice was eerily similar to his own. Other than the parenthetical of the song title, no mention of the Ramones, either lyrically or musically, is made throughout the four-minute humdrum. The guitar work of The Edge, while innovative and invigorating in years past, lacks any of the buzz and snarl of Johnny’s chainsaw instrument, and the brouhaha deflates the second Bono opens his mouth.
During “This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now,” a song dedicated to Joe Strummer, the quartet strikes back with a tribute to The Only Band That Mattered. For the most part, it’s an uncomfortable and very un-Clash-like anthem, spritzed with faux-reggae guitars and tinny synths that sound so compressed you feel like you’re shopping at H&M. Adam Clayton’s bass, which snakes like a poor man’s Paul Simonon at times, gets snagged within the song’s Euro-disco vortex and sounds as if the U2 bassist just quit his own band to join a Clash tribute band that can’t play a Clash tune to save their lives.

Sadly, for much of Innocence, U2 employs the kind of recycled, pop-electronica formula that their sonic offspring in Arcade Fire and Coldplay perfected long ago. There’s an over-reliance on synths in almost every song, as the focus is taken off The Edge’s guitar melodies, a staple that has defined the sound of the band throughout its existence. If you were to remove Bono’s vocals from the mix and tune in closely, the record does have a classic U2 moment (or two). The quiet bass that ushers in “Every Breaking Wave” elicits memories of “With or Without You” and will probably yield the band their only single for this album. You can almost discern the slight ripple of The Edge’s guitar strings while Larry Mullen Jr. pops at his snare drum with a simple plod. It escalates into a soothing chorus of lushness and then checks out at the four-minute mark. Best to just click your mouse twice on the repeat button in iTunes and think about what could have been.