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U2Blog
// 15.10.04
U2 in Explosive Form
Review by Adrian Thrills, Daily Mail
15 October 2004
Like the rumble of distant thunder, the rattle and hum of a fast approaching new U2 album can already be heard. The record, How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, is not released until November 22 and is under the record company's lock and key because of piracy fears.
But the Irish quartet's barnstorming new single, Vertigo, is being played around the clock on the radio and this week went straight to No. 1 in the chart for songs legally downloaded from the internet.
The band themselves suddenly seem to be everywhere, too. The past few weeks have seen frontman Bono make a passionate speech to the Labour Party conference in Brighton, a spate of glossy magazine covers and, now, a troop-rallying one-off playback of the new album for critics and retailers in London. When one throws in the publication later this month (October 28) of U2 Show (an Atlas-sized coffeetable book packed with live photos) and rumours of a world tour that should visit Britain early next summer, it is clear that the group are going to be pretty hard to avoid in the coming months.
The big question, of course, is whether the new album, the band's 11th studio effort, is any good. And while it is difficult to make a definitive judgment at this stage - unless you are the sneaky individual who pilfered guitarist The Edge's copy from a photo-shoot - the initial signs are that the band have delivered another winner.
How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb is the sound of a group playing to its strengths. It avoids the empty experimentation of 1997's disappointing Pop and concentrates on the power, precision and growing subtlety that have sustained the band in the 26 years since they formed at Mount Temple High School in Dublin.
And, while it is hardly the great leap forward that will win a horde of new admirers, that shouldn't concern an outfit whose last album, 2000's All That You Can't Leave Behind, sold 11 million copies.
All the familiar U2 hallmarks are present and correct. The formidable Bono Bellow is unleashed in its full splendour on the anthemic Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own, and the singer's voice sounds broader and more wideranging than on recent albums.
The Edge, meanwhile, makes full use of his special effects pedals, harking back to the shimmering guitars of The Joshua Tree on Crumbs From Your Table and the soulful, bluesrock of Rattle And Hum on All Because Of You.
The album opens with Vertigo and Miracle Drug, two bare-boned rockers that put U2 back in touch with their inner garage band.
The arrangements are then fleshed out as the album develops. City Of Blinding Lights, with its moody piano, is the first track to deviate from the initial, stripped-down template, building slowly into a widescreen U2 epic.
Elsewhere, other numbers also stand out. Love And Peace Or Else is the album's most emphatic political statement. A glam-rock stomp somewhere between Led Zeppelin and Iggy Pop's Nightclubbing, it is a heartfelt plea for tranquillity in the Middle East that makes its point without preaching.
Then, as the frantic early pace finally relents, the record closes with a series of those plaintive, semielectronic ballads that U2 do so well: guitars and strings combine to create a majestic wall of sound on Original Of The Species while One Step Closer, in which Bono sings of being 'hung out to dry in my old clothes', features some electronic wizardry from Brian Eno.
In building their songs up from simple foundations, U2 avoid the bombastic streak that has sometimes spoilt their music in the past.
With bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr rock solid throughout, the robust rhythm twins successfully check any tendency towards over elaboration from their two more celebrated bandmates. The only things that are genuinely long-winded about U2 these days seem to be their album titles, which have certainly become more verbose since Boy, October and War.
As for whether they can still cut it musically, the evidence here suggests that, yes, they still can.
