Like most people, I imagine, I am very well versed in the well known songs of U2. How could I not be? During the 80s they were ubiquitous. U2 and R.E.M. (possibly the subject of a later listening post) came out at the same time, have lasted the same amount of time and had roughly the same number of hits.
The difference is that, while Stipe and Co. soldiered on after a key member left (after saying that they wouldn’t ever do such a thing) U2 has been comprised of the same 4 Irish lads since 1980.
1980! If Rock and Roll began in 1955, which is the accepted norm, then u2 has been around for more than HALF of the history of Rock.
What really surprised me as I began to research this retrospective is just how young they all are. Three of the members were born in 1961 and the other is even younger. I was born in 1965 which makes Bono and the gang close to being contemporaries.
The thing is, I have never heard the entire albums. I own them, in various forms, but after the big hit songs it just all sounds the same to me, so I would turn the record, CD, mp3, off.
Who among us doesn’t own “The Joshua Tree”? And who has really listened beyond the first four tracks? (U2 notoriously front loads their albums with the hit singles starting off with a bang but giving us little reason to keep listening sometimes)
So, an end shall be put to that for me. I have begun the great U2 retrospective of 2008. And here’s what I think:
U2 – The Joshua Tree – 1987 (buy it)
Hey! What’s that sound? Harmonicas???? Acoustic Guitar??! What the hell? What is this?
Oh, hey. It’s The Joshua Tree. The uber-iconic u2 album. THE album from the sky, as a friend likes to put things. To my friend, there are some songs that are “songs from the sky”, they just floated down and landed in the hands of someone who knew what to do with them. This album is loaded, LOADED with them. And melody. And a peripheral Dave Evans. Like a spice or a flavor, that is his guitars on Joshua.
I’m being inordinately hard on The Edge but that’s just because he’s always been the Spock to Bono’s Kirk. He gets more credit than I think he deserves. He’s methodical and KNOWS how important he is to the sound, but, dammit, I just wish there was less of him. Apparently, Lanois and company agree and are able to reign him in and because of that he soars in simplicity on songs like the gorgeous “Mothers of the Disappeared”.
On this album there is less. Of everything. There is space. between the notes, in the songs, in the harmonies. even as the room fills with sound the songs breath and lift themselves up through the minimalism. It all amounts to so much more. These songs don’t just fall from the sky. They crash to the earth with such a resounding import that they demand to be heard. And once they are, “With or Without You”, “Where the Streets Have No Name”, “In God’s Country”, “Bullet the Blue Sky”, “I still Haven’t Found What I am Looking For”, they never leave you.
While the layers of “U2” are indelible here, I can’t help but think that, hey, this album would be just as good without them.
Now, I’ve never made it past the first half of the cd so imagine what a treat it was to hear “One Tree Hill” for the first time.” And “Running to Stand Still”. And the weeping beauty of the aforementioed “Mothers of the Disappeared”. Bliss.
Of course there is the inevitable mood piece (Exit) and weak posturing (Red Hill Mining Town) but we shall forgive the transgressions in the light of all which has come before, after and around. If “The Unforgettable Fire” was their mainstream breakthrough, this is the succulent dessert. Decadent, extreme, filling that it leaves you not so sated that you don’t want more, but full enough that you know you have digested something great.
Grade A+
A Side: Really? Ok. “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”
Blindside: Tie: Running to Stand Still & One Tree Hill
Downside: Red Hill Mining Town
Ratings explained:
A Sides are the hit you should own.
Blindsides are the songs you probably never heard but would enjoy
Downsides are the worst track on the album.
Perfect concept — that this album dropped from the sky. If it was a coke bottle, my cohort was the tribe that found it — I was a senior in high school at the time this thing hit Earth and we were wondrous indeed.
-your bro