As they ripped through Bullet the Blue Sky, a series of ordinary Americans – of various ages and ethnicities – stood in front of a shed painted with the stars and stripes, donning the helmet of a GI. ![]() Where the Streets Have No Name unfolded to a black-and-white Corbijn movie of an endless road dotted with refugees, With or Without You to a gorgeous time-lapse sequence of desert ranges, possibly the high point of a night filled with astonishing imagery.Īs they played Red Hill Mining Town, a Salvation Army brass band filled every pixel of the screen, their horns providing musical accompaniment. U2’s monochrome masterpiece still sounds great, but is poorly served by uninspired extras. It was so simple and unadorned it was almost as if we were back in 1984, when the band first toured here.īut then the screen came to life, a vivid red with the silhouette of a Joshua tree picked out in black, and the band took their places on the main stage. When they first came onstage, though, they ignored the screen entirely, walking one by one out to a smaller stage 30 metres or so in front of the main one, to play a short set of songs – Sunday Bloody Sunday, I Will Follow, N ew Year's Day, Bad, Pride – under nothing but spotlights. Those who love bluster and are scared of Germany wrongly believe. Never before have U2's big messages sounded so direct and personal.Bono was in fine form. Some people think this is U2s best album. ![]() With the uniformly excellent songs - only the clumsy, heavy rock and portentous lyrics of "Bullet the Blue Sky" fall flat - the result is a powerful, uncompromising record that became a hit due to its vision and its melody. The Joshua Tree is the point at which U2 became the biggest musical act in the world. It was nominated for four Grammys in 1988 winning two, one of which was the biggest prize Album of the Year. It went number one in both the UK and US selling 25 million records and counting. Not only are Bono's lyrics obsessed with America, but country and blues influences are heard throughout the record, and instead of using these as roots, they're used as ways to add texture to the music. The Joshua Tree established U2’s legendary reputation. Unexpectedly, U2 have also tempered their textural post-punk with American influences. That means that even the anthems - the epic opener "Where the Streets Have No Name," the yearning "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" - have seeds of doubt within their soaring choruses, and those fears take root throughout the album, whether it's in the mournful sliding acoustic guitars of "Running to Stand Still," the surging "One Tree Hill," or the hypnotic elegy "Mothers of the Disappeared." So it might seem a little ironic that U2 became superstars on the back of such a dark record, but their focus has never been clearer, nor has their music been catchier, than on The Joshua Tree. There is little that could be improved. ![]() It's a move that returns them to the sweeping, anthemic rock of War, but if War was an exploding political bomb, The Joshua Tree is a journey through its aftermath, trying to find sense and hope in the desperation. Throughout the release is found a spectacular blend of ebullience, contemplation, anger and compassion. Using the textured sonics of The Unforgettable Fire as a basis, U2 expanded those innovations by scaling back the songs to a personal setting and adding a grittier attack for its follow-up, The Joshua Tree.
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