Dismantling U2
Back in the day, I had a healthy obsession for all things U2. All throughout high school, U2 was my musical beacon, guiding me through the turgid times that were 90’s “alternative rock”.
The major lift
My U2 fandom started about two weeks too late to see them play ZooTV in Minneapolis (a missed opportunity I will never stop regretting) and blossomed through the release of two albums, Zooropa and Pop. In the years between album releases, generally 4 in U2’s case, I eagerly sought out and acquired as much of their back catalog as I could. For being a kid in North Dakota, I think I did an admirable job, thanks in large part to the blossoming Internet and the retail mecca that was Fargo.
I lived for any snippet of new material from the band. I was all over the leaked demos from Pop, and played the studio taped from Achtung Baby to death. I traded bootlegs before the days of Napster or BitTorrent and scoured CDNow via telnet for any old singles. The hunt proved plentiful and the days were good.
The minor fall
It was with this anticipation in 2000 that I looked forward to their next release All That You Can’t Leave Behind. According to Bono, U2 was out to reclaim the title of “World’s Biggest Band” and in doing so, they were going back to their stripped-down, 4-man-band roots.
Bono said these things because they felt like they had to apologize to their fans for the “disaster” that was Pop. Notice the quotes. I liked it. A lot of others did too. It was a bold move for a band that, at the time, people thought couldn’t get much bolder.
Unfortunately, I think it was a high water mark of sorts. ATYCLB, while providing some excellent stadium rock tunes (proven by their highly successful Elevation tour), was too clean and too awkward. Bono’s lyrics lacked the abstract nature of previous albums, and were forced and clumsy. The band was solid, but not spectacular, and certainly not innovative (c.f. Zoo Station, Love Is Blindness, Lemon, Daddy’s Going to Pay for Your Crashed Car, Mofo).
So ATYCLB tempered my obsession. Fair enough. In the meantime, I had found many other bands and was learning to enjoy the benefits of alternative country, indie rock, and the local music scenes.
When the buzz for U2’s next album started up, it didn’t register on my radar for weeks. Whereas before I’d be up on every last detail, this time around, any mention of the band recording a new album solicited a vague nod of recognition from me.
My first exposure to How to Dismantle and Atomic Bomb was Vertigo and was similar to that of millions of others all over the world – I downloaded it through iTunes, rocked out to it, and then forgot about it, more or less. True, I did have it in my head a for a couple of days, and Edge’s guitar proved to be equal to the “blistering” labels thrown about, but one song does not an album make. Especially in this case.
Marking the first time since I became a fan, I neglected to get the album on the day it was released. I think I finally picked it up on Thursday, if for no other reason than to help the band along in their release-week sales statistics.
My first time listening to HTDAAB was very similar to my first time listening to ATYCLB. Both albums start off with a near-perfect single then start to wander. And as the songs wandered, so did my attention. I kept hoping that maybe the next song would be the one that would bring the album together, that maybe there would be a place in the album that would anchor itself firmly as the center of the experience. Sadly, I found no such place.
Taken alone, the tunes are passable (more so than the individual tunes on ATYCLB, anyway), but taken as a whole, the album lacks direction. Absent still is the atmosphere that surrounds the music, the Berlin in Achtung Baby, the America in Rattle and Hum. What is left behind is a band that knows their place all too well and shows little interest in tearing down their walls any more.
