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U2’s Joshua Tree still thrills and challenges

U2 Twickenham

U2 come out swinging. Having warmed up an already expectant crowd with The Waterboys’ guaranteed party starter ‘The Whole Of The Moon’ as their intro tape, the band launch into a chronological run of eight songs that have anchored their live performances for at least the past 30 years.

As Bono declares “there’s no place we’d rather be than here with you”, a thunderous ‘Sunday Bloody Sunday’ makes way for a jubilant ‘New Year’s Day’. ‘Bad’, the only bonafide stadium anthem to ever tackle heroin addiction, still manages to sound menacingly tragic and beautifully uplifting all at once, before the always rousing ‘Pride (In The Name Of Love)’ soars even higher thanks to 55,000 unprompted backing vocalists (and a subtle but incisive lyric change to reflect the refugee crisis).

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Music Reviews

U2 rock Cape Town

“I don’t want to go home,” admits a clearly elated Bono as U2’s Cape Town show draws to an end. The feeling — echoed by the capacity crowd — is completely understandable: it’s been a shared evening of rock ‘n roll showmanship, political soapboxing, and surprising intimacy.

For all the size of the show — six days to set up; 204 shipping crates of equipment; 32 000 fasteners for the video screen alone — it’s ultimately about the four men at the middle of the 360-degree stage. This spectacle has soul.

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Music Reviews

U2 look to the horizon

Larry Mullen pounds away like the Eveready Bunny on speed. Adam Clayton’s fingers stampede up and down his bass guitar’s fretboard. With his amp dialled up to 11, The Edge fires off savage riffs of mass destruction. U2’s misfiring ‘Get On Your Boots’ certainly relies on a shock and awe approach. And yet what hits hardest is an almost throwaway line from Bono: “I don’t want to talk about wars between nations.”

And, for most of the band’s 12th studio album, the man who never shuts up about poverty, Aids, third world debt and wars between nations actually keeps his word. The Big Themes are edged out by character studies of ordinary people, himself (“Napoleon in high heels”), and, clearly unable to ditch the political entirely, an Afghan man wounded in a bomb blast.

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Music Reviews

U2 go back to the start

U2 go back to where it all began, with expanded reissues of their first three albums, ‘Boy’, ‘October’, and ‘War’, tracking their ascent from playing Dublin’s pubs to headlining Red Rocks Arena.

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Music Reviews

U2 pick the hits

The video for U2’s ‘Window in the Skies’ is a montage of vintage clips, cleverly edited so that veritable icons like Bob Marley, Louis Armstrong, Jimi Hendrix, Frank Sinatra, The Clash and Johnny Cash appear to be singing the words. Cheeky maybe, but take one listen to ‘U218 Singles’ and it’s easy to hear why these four Irishmen have joined that pantheon of rock royalty.

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Music Reviews

U2 get explosive

“Time won’t take the boy out of this man,” declares Bono on ‘City of Blinding Lights’, one of the numerous highlights on U2’s stellar new album. And he might just be right.

With its jangling guitars and keyboard melodies from 1983’s ‘War’ album, the song burns with the rampant energy of boys hungry for success. But, the passion and vintage sounds battle it out with the finesse and skill you get from a group of fortysomething men who’ve enjoyed that success for near on two decades.

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U2 relive the difficult years

“We’re going away to dream it all up again,” Bono declared. Speaking at U2’s last concert of the 1980s the band’s lead singer was not just responding to the critical backlash that had greeted their latest album, ‘Rattle and Hum’. He had unwittingly set the tone for the group’s output of the next ten years.

A difficult decade for the Irish foursome, documented here on their second ‘Best Of’ compilation, the 1990s were marked by musical experimentation as the band continually sought to find a new voice.

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