Achtung Baby scared me. U2 set an impossibly high bar
with The Joshua Tree in 1987. That album arrived in the
spring of my junior year in college and provided the soundtrack for my senior
year and beyond. It represented the pinnacle of an esthetic the band had
carefully cultivated for years - austere, monumental and panoramic. A
huge record in every way, The Joshua Tree only grew in scope and
influence. The songs were anthemic propelled by a forceful rhythmic drive;
with echo drenched guitars and earnest vocals.
The whole record seemed to be played from the top of a mountain or at
least a building.
Their follow-up, the album and film Rattle And Hum released
the following year failed to reach the impossible expectations set by the hype
machine and context of their previous work. Overblown described it
perfectly as earnest began to feel more like pompous. While The Joshua Tree exuded American
imagery, both the Rattle And Hum movie and album engaged the country in a much
more clumsy fashion. Bob Dylan and B.B.
King made guest appearances. Billie
Holiday and John Coltrane were name-dropped.
The album wasn’t exactly bad, but it certainly failed to live up to what
their audience had come to expect.
Then for two years the critics bashed on the band. Bono compared U2 to the Beatles with the
expected result a chorus of critical and popular catcalls. Word arrived
that the band holed-up in Berlin and that the next record would reflect their
new-found love of the club scene and dance music. U2. Dance
music. Uh-oh. Even the name of the new album inspired fear. U2 desperately needed a fresh start.
When Achtung Baby was released, I lived in a small apartment
in a little village in rural Japan. In those days, before the internet
and completely isolated in a way hard to relate to today, I waited.
For
weeks I looked forward to the release of the new U2 album. When the day finally arrived, I drove my two
cylinder mini car forty five minutes to the nearest city as the shop near us
did not carry new releases.
The album could not have been more different than The Joshua Tree. Gone were the wide angle black and white
American desert vistas and majestic anthems. Achtung Baby’s cover
featured a barrage of garish images from all over the world and like these images,
the music felt more saturated, intimate and immediate.
Adam Clayton aptly described the opening of Zoo Station as "the Edge
chopping down the Joshua Tree." Every track is bookended by strange
otherworldly sounds. On the up-tempo tracks
like The Fly and Mysterious Ways the rhythm section finds a funky groove we
never would have expected. The lyrics,
like the music, are not anthems. Bono
sings about the personal, intimate and cynical details of relationships from an
often callous perspective. Earnest
preaching has been replaced by an almost ugly casual honesty on songs like
Until The End Of The World and Ultraviolet.
I listened to it so much that I literally wore out my fancy ten disc cd
player, but that's another story.
In hindsight, the album does extend from the bands previous work. The
lyrics reflect a consideration of the politics of truthfulness. The songs are propelled by the
incredible rhythm sections and the guitar effects bring them to life.
Just like the band's finest work before and since.
U2 had worked their
way out of the trap and charted a new direction for the future and in the
process recorded something completely thrilling: a perfect launching point for
the years ahead.
U2 would make other great records, but they have yet to top this scary
masterpiece.
No comments:
Post a Comment