![]() ![]() In the stomping, harmonicaspiked rocker “Trip Through Your Wires,” what looks like salvation could easily be evil seduction “One Tree Hill” is a soft, haunting benediction on a U2 crew member who died in a motorcycle accident and “Red Hill Mining Town” echoes Peter Gabriel’s “Don’t Give Up” in its unsparing look at personal relationships savaged by economic hardship - here, the aftermath of the largely unsuccessful British miners’ strike of 1984.īut for all its gloom, the album is never a heavy-handed diatribe. The raging, melodramatic “Bullet the Blue Sky” ties Biblical fire and brimstone with American violence overseas and at home. At first, refreshingly honest, romantic declarations alternate with unsettling religious imagery. Without making a show of its eclecticism, it features assertive rock (“Where the Streets Have No Name”), raw frenzy (“Bullet the Blue Sky”), delicacy (“One Tree Hill”), chugging rhythms (“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”) and even acoustic bluesiness (“Running to Stand Still”) - all of it unmistakably U2.īut if this is a breakthrough, it’s a grim, dark-hued one. More than any other U2 album, though, The Joshua Tree has the power and allure to seduce and capture a mass audience on its own terms. The band still falls into some old traps: Bono’s perpetually choked-up voice can sound overwrought and self-important some of the images (fire and rain, say) start to lose their resonance after a dozen or so uses and “Exit,” a recited psychodrama about a killer, is awkward enough to remind you that not even Patti Smith could regularly pull off this sort of thing. But for every predictably roaring anthem there’s a spare, inventively arranged tune, such as “With or Without You,” a rock & roll bolero that builds from a soothing beginning to a resounding climax. U2’s sonic trademarks are here: the monumental angst of Bono’s voice, the driving pulse of Adam Clayton’s bass and Larry Mullen Jr.’s drums and the careening wail of the Edge’s guitar. On the new album, U2 retains Eno and Lanois, brings back Lillywhite to mix four songs and weds the diverse textures of The Unforgettable Fire to fully formed songs, many of them as aggressive as the hits on War. The band swapped longtime producer Steve Lillywhite for Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois and, with The Unforgettable Fire, declared its intention to no longer be as relentlessly heroic. But U2 saw itself in danger of becoming just another sloganeering arena-rock band, so the group closed that chapter with a live record and video. The band ruled that out years ago: Songs like “Sunday Bloody Sunday” and “New Year’s Day” hit with driving force on the 1983 album and subsequent tour. The title befits a record that concerns itself with resilience in the face of utter social and political desolation, a record steeped in religious imagery.īono Finds His Calling in First Excerpt From Upcoming Memoir 'Surrender'īut The Joshua Tree isn’t an outright return to the fire of War. A Mormon legend claims that their early settlers called the Joshua tree “the praying plant” and thought its gnarled branches suggested the Old Testament prophet Joshua pointing the way to the Promised Land. But in its musical toughness and strong-willed spirituality, the album lives up to its namesake: a hardy, twisted tree that grows in the rocky deserts of the American Southwest. ![]() The Joshua Tree is U2’s most varied, subtle and accessible album, although it doesn’t contain any sure-fire smash hits. That’s not to say that this record is either a flagrantly commercial move or another Born in the U.S.A. For a band that’s always specialized in inspirational, larger-than-life gestures - a band utterly determined to be Important - The Joshua Tree could be the big one, and that’s precisely what it sounds like. Now, it seems, U2 is poised to rise from the level of mere platinum groups to the more rarefied air above. ![]() Its last album, The Unforgettable Fire, contained “Pride (In the Name of Love),” its biggest-selling single ever, and last year the band was the musical heart of Amnesty International’s Conspiracy of Hope tour. Undercover 68 black yarn.The stakes are enormous, and U2 knows it. ![]()
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