FEATURE:
A Buyer’s Guide
Part Sixteen: U2
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IN this edition of A Buyer’s Guide…
PHOTO CREDIT: Olaf Heine
I am concentrating on one of the biggest Rock bands ever: the mighty and legendary U2. They are a band who have released more than a few classic albums! I have not been able to include them all here but, if you need suggestions as to where to start with the band, and which albums are worth greater exploration, I have whittled down to the essential four, one album that is underrated, in addition to their most recent record – and I have suggested a great U2 book too. It has been interesting investigating and delving into the Dublin band’s catalogue and discovering some real treats. If you require some assistance navigating your way around U2’s best work then I think that…
Release Date: 28th February, 1983
Label: Island
Producer: Steve Lilywhite
Standout Tracks: Seconds/Two Hearts Beat as One/40
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/U2-War/master/48830
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/1Gjf9WFBefwPqt7PxGH1n2
Review:
“Opening with the ominous, fiery protest of "Sunday Bloody Sunday," War immediately announces itself as U2's most focused and hardest-rocking album to date. Blowing away the fuzzy, sonic indulgences of October with propulsive, martial rhythms and shards of guitar, War bristles with anger, despair, and above all, passion. Previously, Bono's attempts at messages came across as grandstanding, but his vision becomes remarkably clear on this record, as his anthems ("New Year's Day," "40," "Seconds") are balanced by effective, surprisingly emotional love songs ("Two Hearts Beat as One"), which are just as desperate and pleading as his protests. He performs the difficult task of making the universal sound personal, and the band helps him out by bringing the songs crashing home with muscular, forceful performances that reveal their varied, expressive textures upon repeated listens. U2 always aimed at greatness, but War was the first time they achieved it” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: Sunday Blood Sunday
The Unforgettable Fire
Release Date: 1st October, 1984
Label: Island
Producers: Brian Eno/Daniel Lanois
Standout Tracks: A Sort of Homecoming/4th of July/Bad
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/U2-The-Unforgettable-Fire/master/62831
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/350KqwwAhQFNyknLHf21lS
Review:
“After their first major breakthrough with 1983's War and its anthems "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "New Year's Day", U2 could have easily continued to perfect the fist-pumping, flag-waving arena battle cry. Instead, they sought out producer Brian Eno, a bold choice for a band looking to parlay semi-success into something Springsteen-ian. While Eno is now seen as a go-to stadium savior (see: Coldplay's Viva La Vida), back then he was still the guy who coaxed magnificent weirdness out of David Bowie and Talking Heads, to say nothing of his own work, which ranged from prog-rock insanity to elegant wallpaper. The U2/Eno braintrust has since become one of the most out-and-out successful in rock history, but The Unforgettable Fire finds the pair-- along with frequent conspirator Daniel Lanois-- feeling each other out and testing limits. The album ebbs and flows along the spectrum between the spiky, post-punk U2 of old and the impressionistic, Eno-assisted U2 they were yearning to become” – Pitchfork
Choice Cut: Pride (In the Name of Love)
The Joshua Tree
Release Date: 6th March, 1987
Label: Island
Producers: Brian Eno/Daniel Lanois
Standout Tracks: I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For/With or Without You/One Tree Hill
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/U2-The-Joshua-Tree/master/64290
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/586ZRfgsIckfcKvHVcGM4V
Review:
“Using the textured sonics of The Unforgettable Fire as a basis, U2 expanded those innovations by scaling back the songs to a personal setting and adding a grittier attack for its follow-up, The Joshua Tree. It's a move that returns them to the sweeping, anthemic rock of War, but if War was an exploding political bomb, The Joshua Tree is a journey through its aftermath, trying to find sense and hope in the desperation. That means that even the anthems -- the epic opener "Where the Streets Have No Name," the yearning "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" -- have seeds of doubt within their soaring choruses, and those fears take root throughout the album, whether it's in the mournful sliding acoustic guitars of "Running to Stand Still," the surging "One Tree Hill," or the hypnotic elegy "Mothers of the Disappeared." So it might seem a little ironic that U2 became superstars on the back of such a dark record, but their focus has never been clearer, nor has their music been catchier, than on The Joshua Tree. Unexpectedly, U2 have also tempered their textural post-punk with American influences. Not only are Bono's lyrics obsessed with America, but country and blues influences are heard throughout the record, and instead of using these as roots, they're used as ways to add texture to the music. With the uniformly excellent songs -- only the clumsy, heavy rock and portentous lyrics of "Bullet the Blue Sky" fall flat -- the result is a powerful, uncompromising record that became a hit due to its vision and its melody. Never before have U2's big messages sounded so direct and personal” – AllMusic
Choice Cut: Where the Streets Have No Name
Achtung Baby
Release Date: 18th November, 1991
Label: Island
Producers: Brian Eno/Daniel Lanois
Standout Tracks: One/The Fly/Mysterious Ways
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/U2-Achtung-Baby/master/20774
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/5n52kyQKeUZs5ObZJejLQd
Review:
“Achtung Baby seemed like a pivotal record in U2’s history when it was released in 1991, and it’s no less important 20 years later. But it’s wasn’t the actual songs that moved U2 forward so much as what they signaled about the band’s approach to its own fame and image. Musically, Achtung Baby is just as concerned with matters of the heart and spirit as 1987’s The Joshua Tree. And it’s as wrapped up in hero worship and aligning with rock ’n’ roll greats as 1988’s polarizing Rattle & Hum. It’s just that U2 deftly altered its style and frames of reference; out went the previous two albums’ earnestness, Bob Dylan and Beatles influences, and obsession with America, and in came irony, pan-Europeanism, and David Bowie’s Berlin period.
Strip away that context, however, and Achtung Baby sounds a like a typical U2 record—a terrific U2 record, arguably the best record U2 has ever made, but not exactly the decisive break from the band’s past it is remembered as. What Achtung Baby instead represents is U2’s last great creative gasp, evidenced by the album’s new reissue in various formats, including two multi-disc “super deluxe” and “über deluxe” editions, which compile a wealth of B-sides, remixes, and alternate tracks, as well as the entirety of Achtung Baby’s follow-up, 1993’s Zooropa” – The A.V. Club
Choice Cut: Even Better Than the Real Thing
The Underrated Gem
Pop
Release Date: 3rd March, 1997
Label: Island
Producers: Flood/Howie B/Steve Osborne
Standout Tracks: If God Will Send His Angels/Last Night on Earth/Please
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/U2-Pop/master/62553
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/5mojJwWgWNJcY3odUGgQc3
Review:
“As it turns out, you won’t find much evidence of trip-hop on Pop, although sections of “Miami” and “If God Will Send His Angels” come close to that mutant strain of the genre. What you will find is a whole arsenal of sound effects, tape manipulations, distortions and treatments designed to mask the fact that U2 are still essentially a four-piece male rock band. Unlike R.E.M., U2 know that technology is ineluctably altering the sonic surface — and, perhaps, even the very meaning — of rock & roll. In that sense, their competition now is not so much R.E.M. as it is Orbital or Prodigy.
What we can say immediately is that Pop sounds absolutely magnificent. Working with Flood, who engineered Achtung Baby and co-produced Zooropa, the group has pieced together a record whose rhythms, textures and visceral guitar mayhem make for a thrilling roller-coaster ride, one whose sheer inventiveness is plainly bolstered by the heavy involvement of techno/trip-hop wizard Howie B(familiar from his work on Passengers’ Original Soundtracks I)” – Rolling Stone
Choice Cut: Discotheque
The Latest/Final Album
Songs of Experience
Release Date: 1st December, 2017
Labels: Interscope/Island/Universal Canada
Producers: Jacknife Lee/Ryan Tedder/Steve Lillywhite (add.)/Andy Barlow (add.)/Jolyon Thomas (add.)/Brent Kutzle (add.)/Paul Epworth (add.)/Danger Mouse (add.)/Declan Gaffney (add.)
Standout Tracks: You’re the Best Thing About Me/Red Flag Day/Love Is Bigger Than Anything in Its Way
Buy: https://www.discogs.com/U2-Songs-Of-Experience/master/1275631
Stream: https://open.spotify.com/album/6S9YaGXnmRe8tWJ0e457HP?si=7LFKouMyT1ii6jkHQXdUsw
Review:
“But despite its flaws, Songs of Experience is an audibly better album than either of its predecessors. For one thing, not all its errors are overwhelming – if the Auto-Tune feels a bit jarring, the song it decorates is still pretty great. And for another, when U2 calm down and allow themselves to be themselves, the results are frequently fantastic, not least Get Out of Your Own Way, which is both utterly beautiful and feels not unlike a long, relieved exhalation of breath. Often it seems as if the moments that deal with the aforementioned brush with mortality are the most natural and enjoyable, as if concerns about their frontman’s potential demise caused everyone to stop worrying about U2’s place within the contemporary scheme of things and focus on the music. Boasting a guitar part atmospheric and understated even by the Edge’s 80s standards, the concluding 13 (There Is a Light) is delicately affecting; Landlady’s extended apology to Bono’s wife, , gently achieves precisely the kind of emotional uplift Love is Bigger Than Anything In Its Way nearly gives itself a hernia trying to attain; Lights of Home welds distorted slide guitar and a gospel-ish chorus to an entirely fantastic song. The Showman, meanwhile, is playful and authentically funny: a reflection on the contradictions and ridiculousness of the job of rock star that shows infinitely more self-awareness than Bono’s critics would give him credit for” – The Guardian
Choice Cut: Get Out of Your Own Way
The U2 Book
U2: Songs + Experience
Author: Niall Stokes
Publication Date: 4th October, 2018
Publisher: Welbeck Publishing Group
Synopsis:
“U2: Songs + Experience is the ultimate celebration of the act hailed as the greatest rock band in the world. Co-written by Brian Boyd, a leading music journalist and close associate of the band, and Niall Stokes, editor of Ireland's legendary Hot Press magazine, the book recounts the band's incredible career and analyses the songs from all of their studio albums (including Boy, The Joshua Tree and Songs of Experience).
The book discusses influences, inspiration and the origins of their immensely popular music, all accompanied by rare photographs, including many items of rock memorabilia, comprising posters, backstage passes, classic flyers and more” – Waterstones
Order: https://www.waterstones.com/book/u2-songs-experience/niall-stokes//9781787390898