Tribute albums have a tendency to be one of the most overdone and under-worthy genres in the music business. Take a bunch of songs by a worthy artist, farm them out to a bunch of bands that aren’t nearly as well known, and issue a ‘tribute’ album that usually tends to be an excercise in mediocrity — there will usually be one, maybe two tracks that shine through, while the rest range from ‘listenable’ to ‘why bother?’
However, while going through my CD collection, I’ve found something of a rare gem: We Will Follow: A Tribute to U2 (this tends to happen when you’ve got 1000+ CD’s, by the way…it’s way too easy to lose track of music for a while). While this album does have a couple duds on it, the overall collection is definitely quite a few steps above the average tribute album — I’ve had it going on random for the past couple days without going absolutely buggy, which can be quite the rare thing. The majority of the tracks range from listenable to good, with probably between 3 and 5 real gems on here. If you’re at all into U2 and/or synth-pop/electronica, I can acually recommend picking this one up.
Here’s a quick track listing: Heaven 17 With or Without You / Information Society One / Front Line Assembly with Tiffany New Year’s Day / Razed in Black Pride / Dead or Alive Even Better Than the Real Thing / Spahn Ranch We Will Follow / Mission UK All I Want Is You / Electric Hellfire Club Sunday Bloody Sunday / Rosetta Stone October / Die Krupps Numb / Silverbeam with Ann Louise Where the Streets Have No Name / Bang Tango Even Better Than the Real Thing (Julian Beeston Mix) / The Polecats Desire / Intra-Venus Discotheque (Suspira Mix)